IUCRC Phase II+ West Virginia University: Center for Building Reliable Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnology (IUCRC BRAIN)

Disability is becoming a leading cause of healthcare 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. There is a 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 for the validation of safety, efficacy, and reliability of neurotechnology are lagging; current technologies are costly, limiting their deployment for treatment of disabilities; and 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 neurotechnology 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 neurotechnology 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 neurotechnology 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 for underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and math by broadening new participation and retaining current participants.

BRAIN will address problems in the neurological space that disproportionately affect underrepresented groups. 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 West Virginia Site of IUCRC BRAIN will focus on bringing clinical testing of multi-scale, multi-modal, and trans-disciplinary approaches to the overall IUCRC team. WVU has expertise in neural engineering and first-in-human testing of novel neurological devices. The Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute provides a unique environment of clinical trials and testing of high-impact neurological treatments.

Statler College of Engineering supports the engineering technology and applications development of new biotechnology applications. This multi-disciplinary WVU team will work with other BRAIN sites and industry partners to translate discoveries in neurotechnology for implanted brain-computer interfaces, treating human disability, clinical data sharing, and the use of AI-connected virtual reality applications for improved medical treatments.

The WVU site will provide support to maintain a project repository (https://nsfbrain.org/) at University of Houston Center, comprised of products and services for 10-years after the completion of this project.

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.