CSEE faculty forming site to join the NSF BRAIN national center for neurotechnologies

 

Age-related diseases and neurological disorders, such as stroke, spinal cord injury, and traumatic brain injury, can have debilitating effects on cognitive-motor function, significantly decreasing the quality and length of life. There is a critical need for new technologies to better address the care and rehabilitation of these disorders. 

However, innovation in these neurotechnologies faces many challenges: slow evaluation rate compared to their rapid invention, insufficient standards for safety, efficacy, and long-term reliability, long time-to-market delays, and affordability. To address these problems, UMBC has partnered with the University of Houston and Arizona State University to propose a new site to join a multi-institution Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Building Reliable Advances and Innovation in Neurotechnology (BRAIN).

With the support of an NSF IUCRC planning grant, CSEE Professor Ramana Vinjamuri is working to establish the UMBC site to be part of the larger BRAIN effort. His vision is for an East Coast BRAIN research hub that will develop technologies that can help scientists better understand the nervous system and aid people with disabilities. In proposing UMBC as a future BRAIN site, he hopes to connect with industry, medical centers, and government agencies specifically seeking to accelerate neurotechnology research. 

Neurotechnology is a broad discipline that includes everything from methods for measuring brain activity to tools for analyzing clinical data to human-centered computing, the focus of Vinjamuri's research. The proposed UMBC BRAIN site will have five research themes:

• Cyber human systems, led by Ramana Vinjamuri, director of the Vinjamuri Lab;
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning, led by Nilanjan Banerjee, head of the Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor Systems Lab;
• Neural signal processing, co-led by distinguished university professor Tulay Adali, who leads the Machine Learning for Signal Processing Lab and Seung-Jun Kim, who heads the Signal Processing and Smart Systems Lab;
• Neural imaging and stimulation, led by Fow-Sen Choa, head of the Choa Lab; and 
• Virtual/augmented/mixed reality, led by Don Engel, director of the Assistive Visualization and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

As an initial step in joining the BRAIN research center, UMBC and Georgia Tech held an NSF IUCRC planning meeting in September for the proposed site addition. NSF program directors and evaluators attended the meeting, along with current BRAIN center directors and partners, prospective collaborators from industry and universities, and UMBC administrators, faculty, and students.

Current CSEE chair Anupam Joshi and  acting-chair Mohamed Younis expressed strong support for the proposal:

"We're delighted to bring together our significant activities in brain research, spanning areas in EE, CE, and CS -- from electronics to signals to systems to software -- to work with the BRAIN center to address the significant challenges in this area. UMBC knows the power of industry, government, and academia coming together in I/UCRCs to create new research and a diverse workforce to address critical national challenges."

"I am delighted that with the new BRAIN Center, UMBC will be joining a second national IUCRC consortium. My appreciation to Ramana Vinjamuri for his leadership and congratulations to the entire UMBC team on joining this exciting, new consortium."