Dr. Richardson founded the Brain Modulation Lab at the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, with a mission to apply a systems neuroscience approach to improving surgical treatments for epilepsy and movement disorders. At MGH since 2019, the lab's work is facilitated by collaborations with colleagues at MGH, MIT, Harvard Medical School, and Boston University. Unique contributions of the Brain Modulation Lab include the first studies describing simultaneous cortical and subcortical recordings during speech, with support from the BRAIN Initiative, the first study describing biomarkers of therapeutic responsive neurostimulation for epilepsy, and the first study describing a biomarker of OCD symptomatology from sensing-enabled DBS recordings.

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Dr. Richardson's clinical expertise includes awake brain mapping during epilepsy and DBS surgery, robotic-assisted stereotactic surgery, and network surgery approaches to epilepsy, including Responsive Neurostimulation. He was Director of Epilepsy and Movement Disorders Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) from 2011-2019 and established an internationally recognized intraoperative-MRI neurosurgery program, encompassing DBS for movement disorders, gene therapy clinical trials for Parkinson’s disease, and laser thermal ablation for epilepsy. Dr. Richardson is an active consultant on several pioneering clinical trials of brain modulation, in the areas of both closed-loop brain stimulation and gene therapy.