Event
Bioengineering Seminar Series: Joseph Pancrazio
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
0408 Animal Science/Agriculture Engineering Bldg.
Professor Sameer Shah
(301) 405-9958
sameer@umd.edu
Neural Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities
Presented by Joseph Pancrazio
National Institutes of Health
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has the mission to relieve the burden of neurological disease. Neural interfaces have been a vital and productive component of the NINDS mission. For over 30 years, the NINDS has supported grants and contracts on a number of areas within the neural engineering including: neural prosthesis, deep brain stimulation, biocompatibility of neural interfaces, and brain/computer interfaces. The NINDS is particularly interested in seeing the resulting technologies reach translation to the clinical. Of particular interest to the NINDS is future progress in the field of neural prosthetics that will result in assistive technologies to improve the quality of life by restoring motor and communicative functions for individuals with spinal cord injuries, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and stroke. Among the goals of the NINDS effort is the development of totally implantable systems for restoring the motor control and sensory feedback for a paralyzed individual. Significant progress is being made towards the development of motor prostheses for disabled individuals, particularly for upper limb control. This presentation will describe various funding mechanisms used to support basic, applied, and clinical efforts for neural engineering research. Potential emergent areas that are likely to impact the future of neural engineering, such as nanotechnology and computational methods, will be presented and discussed.
