Mark N. Gasson is a British scientist and visiting research fellow at the Cybernetics Research Group, University of Reading, UK. He pioneered developments in direct neural interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, has developed brain–computer interfaces and is active in the research fields of human microchip implants, medical devices and digital identity. He is known for his experiments transmitting a computer virus into a human implant, and is credited with being the first human infected with a computer virus. Gasson has featured on television documentaries including Through the wormhole with Morgan Freeman, international television and radio news programs, and has delivered public lectures discussing his work including at TEDx. In 2010 Gasson was the General chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society 2010 (ISTAS'10) and in 2014 he was entered into the Guinness Book of Records for his experimental work on implantable microchips. He is currently based in Los Angeles, California. Early life and education Gasson obtained his first degree in Cybernetics and Control Engineering in 1998 from the Department of Cybernetics at Reading. He obtained his Ph.D. for 2002 work on interfacing the nervous system of a human to a computer system in 2005. Career From 2000 until 2005 Gasson headed research to invasively interface the nervous system of a human to a computer. In 2002 a microelectrode array was implanted in the median nerve of a healthy human and connected percutaneously to a bespoke processing unit to allow stimulation of nerve fibers to artificially generate sensation perceivable by the subject and recording of local nerve activity to form control commands for wirelessly connected devices. During clinical evaluation of the implant, the nervous system of the human subject, Kevin Warwick, was connected onto the internet in Columbia University, New York enabling a robot arm, developed by Peter Kyberd, in the University of Reading UK to use the subject's neural signals to mimic the subject's hand movements while allowing the subject to perceive what the robot touched from sensors in the robot's finger tips. Further studies also demonstrated a form of extra sensory input and that it was possible to communicate directly between the nervous systems of two individuals, the first direct and purely electronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans, with a view to ultimately creating a form of telepathy or empathy using the Internet to communicate 'brain-to-brain'. Because of the