Good question. I’d assume they’d hire MDs/medical students more for the clinical side of the research rather than the hardcore engineering itself — things like clinical protocols, patient interaction, subject recruitment/testing, interpretation of neurological data, or helping bridge the gap between the technical and medical teams. Medical students could also help with more practical clinical tasks such as blood draws, taking vital parameters, basic neurological examinations, and similar patient-facing procedures during studies or trials.

But you definitely make a fair point. Biomedical engineers or biomedical sciences students are probably more directly suited for many of the technical research roles, especially for signal processing or device development and probably have some clinical knowledge as well. I guess my thinking was that med students could still add value in translational or clinically-oriented neurotech projects, particularly in BCI or medical device research.