Dr. Contreras-Vidal earned his Ph.D. in cognitive and neural systems from Boston University. Dr. Contreras-Vidal is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Houston and an affiliate member of Houston Methodist Research Institute with appointments in the neurosciences research program and the department of neurosurgery. 

Dr. Contreras-Vidal is one of the editorial board member of Neural Networks, Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics, the International Journal of Mobile Computer Interaction, and  Computers in Biology and Medicine. He is also  the president-elect of the International Graphonomics Society. Dr. Contreras-Vidal is the chairman of the NIH and NSF funded 2013 Clinical Brain-Neural Machine Interface Systems workshop at the Research Institute, and an IEEE Senior Member.