Dr. Tim Mahoney is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fluent BCI, a Melbourne-based neurotechnology startup developing a minimally invasive brain-computer interface that translates intended speech directly into text or audio for people living with neurological disorders such as motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis.

Tim completed his PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Melbourne, where his doctoral research was the first to demonstrate that subscalp EEG signals contain the rich neural data required to decode intended speech. Prior to his doctorate, he worked as a Biomedical Engineer at Ramsay Health Care and as a Field Service Engineer at Chemtronics Biomedical Engineering.

Tim's drive to found Fluent was deeply personal, motivated by his sister's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and his recognition that communication restoration was the most critical unmet need for people with neurological conditions. His PhD thesis proved that a subscalp device could capture brain signals comparable in quality to those from invasive intracranial implants.

Fluent emerged from the University of Melbourne's innovation ecosystem, progressing through Proof of Concept funding and the Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre, and has secured A$2 million in seed funding to accelerate development. The company operates out of the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery, co-located with St. Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, enabling close clinical collaboration.

Fluent's platform has achieved 96% phrase identification accuracy across a library of 128 phrases using one of the largest English-language speech intention datasets developed to date. The company has filed a provisional patent for its core technology, with first-in-human clinical studies planned and an FDA clearance target set for 2030.