Background

Rotem Kopel, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer of ABILITY Neurotech, the Swiss clinical-stage brain-computer interface company building a fully implantable wireless ECoG BCI system. The company spun out of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva in March 2025, building on more than eight years of prior R&D and approximately $50 million of investment at the Wyss Center.

ABILITY Neurotech

Under Kopel’s leadership, ABILITY received Investigational Medical Device Dossier (IMDD) approval from the Medical Research Ethics Committee (MREC) NedMec in the Netherlands on 26 May 2026 to begin the first chronic implantation study of its device in ALS patients. The study runs at UMC Utrecht under the INTRECOM consortium (UMC Utrecht, Technical University of Graz, ABILITY Neurotech, and CorTec). ABILITY announced its first-in-human intraoperative recordings at TUM University Hospital Rechts der Isar in Munich on 21 July 2026, in up to five brain tumour surgery patients; the first chronic ALS implant at UMC Utrecht is scheduled for Q4 2026. The company has applied for FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, which had not been granted as of August 2026, and is pursuing parallel EU MDR and FDA regulatory pathways.

Kopel has framed the chronic implantation approval as the moment the BCI field moves from controlled-environment proof points into practical and scalable systems patients can use independently in everyday life. The ABILITY platform is built on a 50 Mb/s transcutaneous optical link that streams raw broadband neural data, designed to support long-term home use beyond clinical-research settings.

Strategic position

Kopel leads ABILITY at the intersection of the European public-research neurotechnology cluster (Wyss Center, EPFL, Campus Biotech Geneva), the European clinical implant ecosystem (UMC Utrecht, Graz, TUM, LMU), and the European implantable-electronics supply chain (CorTec). ABILITY is one of three Wyss Center / EPFL / Campus Biotech Geneva-adjacent BCI companies with 2026 milestones, alongside Neurosoft Bioelectronics and ONWARD Medical.