IUCRC Phase II ASU: Building Reliable Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnology (BRAIN)

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Disability is becoming a leading cause of health care concern because of the increase in survivable trauma and an aging population. Millions of adults live with neurological disorders, brain injury, mental illness, limb loss or paralysis. We face a critical need for accessible technologies that can more effectively address the care and rehabilitation needs of these patients. However, innovation in neurotechnology faces several challenges: The pace of innovation exceeds the rate of evaluation for acceptable performance; standards and regulatory science for the rigorous validation of safety, efficacy, and long-term reliability of neurotechnology are lagging; lack of synergistic, sustained industry-university partnerships impede the transfer of novel technologies to the market; current technologies are costly, limiting their cost-effectiveness in enhancing treatment and overcoming disabilities; and opportunities for workforce development are limited as the need to train new generations of physicians and engineers in emerging technologies steadily increases. The Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Building Reliable Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnology (IUCRC BRAIN) will address the above challenges. The Center’s vision is built on a convergent research approach to the design and validation of reliable, ethical, patient-centered neurotechnologies and their use in understanding neural systems. BRAIN leverages wide-ranging expertise from neural, cognitive and rehabilitation engineering to neurorobotics, neuromodulation, and ethical artificial intelligence to enhance the rate of development and empirical validation of new neurotechnologies through partnerships with industry and other strategic partners while developing a highly skilled workforce; evaluating the impact of these technologies on quality of life; and integrating knowledge across disciplines —such as the humanities with neurotechnologies — to understand collective intelligence, and augment physical and cognitive capabilities. The Center’s mission is multifold: to accelerate the progress of science and advance the national health by transferring neurotechnology to end users and to promote access to science, technology, engineering, and math by broadening new participation and retaining current participants. BRAIN will address problems in the neurological space. BRAIN will become a neurotechnology hub by creating a pipeline from discoveries to solutions, while helping students, scientists, and engineers solve one of the greatest unmet medical and health care needs of our time. The Arizona State University Site will focus on use-inspired research to generate new knowledge about human neural function in health and disease, and apply this knowledge to to improve the human condition by creating wearable devices for monitoring sensorimotor function and technology for neuromodulation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.