Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions

Through NSF funding, graduate students and community partners find novel solutions to public health problems

Sarah Holland — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 16:18:40 +0000

Through NSF funding, graduate students and community partners find novel solutions to public health problems Sarah Holland Fri, 06/21/2024 - 12:18

One of the ways ��AV is All Together Different is its approach to research. Students in the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions (CASBBI) NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program learn how to apply interdisciplinary, community-focused research to find solutions to the world’s grand challenges.

2023-24 NRT cohort members. Photo by Sarah Holland

Since the program began in 2019 with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the NRT Program has bought together graduate students from engineering, data science, and social science for one-year fellowships. Students work in multidisciplinary teams of other fellows and community partners to define a problem within the community and co-develop creative solutions. Thus far, 82 graduate students have participated in the five cohorts.

“No one is doing this level of interdisciplinary convergence,” explained Samuel Acuña, research professor in the Department of Bioengineering and assistant director of CASBBI. “You'll see other programs with, say, mechanical engineers working with electrical engineers, but we have groups with computer scientists, social workers, and linguists working together. Psychologists, engineers, and neuroscientists. It’s novel.”

In the program, students are assigned to groups and matched with community partners working to solve public health problems. The groups work with these partners to establish a project that will best meet their needs: This could be anything from data collection to mobile application development to further developing the work of the previous cohort.

Some groups have even continued their work long after their time in the program concludes; iConnect, an app to connect those suffering from substance abuse to local resources and support, continues beyond the program with their community partner The Chris Atwood Foundation.

“To have, say, a computer science student work with the community and think about people and problems in a way they wouldn’t otherwise, that’s the type of experience that they can draw on for years and years to come,” Acuña said. “The fellowship helps them think more deliberately about how they approach their research through a toolbox of techniques. So, when they’re done, they can approach any issue or problem they might be assigned from this perspective.”

Community-centered and human-centered research is a big draw for some NRT fellows. Morgan Lamarre, BA Dance ’22, BS Bioengineering ’24, master’s student in bioengineering and a member of the 2024-25 cohort, said, “Many of us hope that our careers are in community-facing work, so to have these skills and experience in engaging with the community will be really helpful. And these methods are different from what we see in our classrooms and labs.”

“As engineers, we’re often given a problem to solve how we want and how we think is best without input from the community, and there’s a bit of mistrust between the overall community and the scientific community as a result,” said Kirubel Tadesse, BS Bioengineering ’24, current master’s student in data analytics engineering and incoming cohort member. “But through this method, we’re actively engaging with the community and stakeholders to ensure that our designs are meeting their specific needs. We’re bridging that gap.”

2023-24 Team FIRE (First-responers, Innovation, Research, and Exploration) presents their research at NRT orientation. Photo by Sarah Holland

“It’s a completely new way for us to approach our work,” said Brady Stinson-Smith, master’s student in bioengineering, and fellow member of the incoming cohort. “We can be so siloed in our fields, but this program helps us make the connections between not only the community, but also with researchers in other fields like sociology, psychology, and social work who can help us think better and differently about our approaches and solutions.”

This is the philosophy upon which the NRT program is built. “No one field is enough to solve these problems,” said Acuña. “The leaders of tomorrow need to know how to navigate across multiple disciplines and groups of stakeholders in order to create impactful change.”

“We all come from different approaches,” said Yosef Shaul, PhD student in kinesiology and 2023-24 cohort member. Shaul was a member of team VIRTUE (Violence Intervention and Resolution through Unifying Efforts), focused on addressing barriers to domestic violence prevention and management in Northern Virginia. “Everyone brings their own advantages and attributes. It makes the whole greater.”

Now that he has completed the fellowship, Shaul plans to adjust his research process for his PhD to incorporate more community-centered practices. “My outcomes,” he said, “will now better meet community needs.”

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Student team improves substance use disorder app thanks to venture capital funding

Shayla Brown — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 18:30:23 +0000

Student team improves substance use disorder app thanks to venture capital funding Shayla Brown Wed, 09/20/2023 - 14:30

A ��AV multidisciplinary research team recently received $5,000 in funding from the VentureWell Accelerator to continue to develop their app, iCONNECT SUD.

The team, which includes recent alumna Rebecca Leung, PhD students Dylan Scarton and Tolulope Abidogun, and second year graduate student Srinath Silla, calls themselves the Good Troublers. Their project started as part of the National Science Foundation-funded National Research Traineeship (NRT) program at the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain Body Interactions (CASBBI).

Rebecca Leung, Srinath Silla, Dylan Scarton, and Tolulope Abidogun in Peterson Hall. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding.

“[The NRT Program] trains graduate students to utilize design thinking principles and develop an entrepreneurial mindset to solve the pressing issues in society today using a community-engaged user-centered approach,” said Siddhartha Sikdar, CASBBI director.

“This funding will help the team translate their work and have a real impact in the community.”

Mason was recently ranked No. 1 for research performance in entrepreneurship among public universities, and No. 2 overall nationally, in the latest report from EduRank. The NRT Program is one of a series of programs at Mason designed to help researchers bring their discoveries to market.

The iCONNECT app uses smart technology, such as customized experiences and automated or user-defined identification of local resources, to help those who are struggling with or recovering from substance use disorder (SUD).

“The grant not only helps us in procuring hardware and software to optimize development, it gives us credibility and will also help us with future grants to sustain our work,” said Leung, co-founder of the team who recently graduated from Mason with a master of social work degree.

The team received the grant as part of their Stage 1 or "Pioneer" funding through VentureWell’s E-Team Program to attend a 2-day start-up entrepreneurship workshop at The Engine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they were provided with additional guidance for the use of their funds. Any remaining funds after the Stage 1 workshop expenses are covered will be used to further develop their app.

“It was actually our second time applying for the VentureWell grant,” said Dylan Scarton, a neuroscience PhD student and another co-founder of the team. “They gave us feedback [of items] to address and said that we should be good for the next round.”

Tolulope Abidogun, Srinath Silla, Rebecca Leung, and Siddhartha Sikdar in Peterson Hall. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding.

VentureWell funds for-profit enterprises and some nonprofits, like iCONNECT, that tend to focus on social challenges and health-related innovations. The team’s mentors, Mason mathematics professor Padhu Seshaiyer and social work professor Holly Matto, encouraged them to apply for the funding to help them advance the app.

Tolulope Abidogun, a public health PhD student, is one of the new members of Good Troublers. She works with the team to structure the research side of the app deployment.

“One major goal for us moving forward is to make the [SUD resource collation] process more efficient. It's going to take a lot of groundwork, going to different places and people to get information,” said Abidogun.

The app is currently available and free for all to download, but the beta version only has vetted local resources used by peer recovery specialists in Falls Church and Fairfax County. The team hopes to continue expanding its reach throughout the Washington, D.C., area.

The team is currently gathering information in Arlington, Falls Church, and Fairfax, Virginia, and they hope to implement iCONNECT SUD into the practice of peer recovery specialists in those regions by the end of the year.

In This Story

Siddhartha Sikdar

Holly Matto, PhD, LCSW-C

Padmanabhan Seshaiyer

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Using ultrasound technology to improve the lives of amputees

Melanie Balog — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 23:06:27 +0000

Using ultrasound technology to improve the lives of amputees Melanie Balog Tue, 11/10/2020 - 18:06

Siddhartha Sikdar. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services

Bioengineering professor Siddhartha Sikdar is using technology to help individuals with limb loss better control their prostheses.

His team is investigating a new way to operate prostheses using ultrasound waves to sense muscle activity.

“Our goal is to help amputees go about their daily lives with improved function,” says Siddhartha Sikdar, who is director of the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions (CASBBI).

Approximately 50,000 individuals are living with upper limb loss in the United States. A large proportion (35 to 45 percent) of people with upper extremity amputations discontinue the use of their prosthesis, mainly due to limited functionality and usability, Sikdar said, and there is a significant unmet need to develop better technological solutions to improve function.

His research group was recently awarded a Bioengineering Research Partnership grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop this technology for commercial use and perform clinical trials.

They are collaborating with the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to test this technology in a military population using another new grant from the Department of Defense. They also have a grant from the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund to explore prosthetic training applications using a wearable ultrasound system.

The team is completing additional preliminary studies in amputee subjects using a benchtop system. In the meantime, they are in the process of miniaturizing the ultrasound instrumentation to incorporate it inside a prosthetic socket and developing and testing embedded algorithms for interpreting the ultrasound signals for controlling the prosthetic hands.

The next steps are to perform laboratory tests of an integrated system with people with amputations and perform safety evaluations in preparation for seeking FDA approval.

The successful completion of this research will lead to the first human evaluation of an integrated prototype that uses low-power portable imaging sensors and real-time image analysis to sense residual muscle activity for prosthetic control, he says.

“In the long term, we anticipate that the improvements in functionality and intuitiveness of control will increase acceptance by amputees,” Sikdar says.

Using virtual reality to support addiction recovery

Colleen Rich — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 09:05:59 +0000

Using virtual reality to support addiction recovery Colleen Rich Mon, 10/19/2020 - 05:05

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Can virtual reality help people with substance abuse issues avoid a relapse? A team of ��AV researchers thinks it just might.

Image courtesy of Brightline Interactive

The multidisciplinary team, which includes faculty members Holly Matto, Padmanabhan Seshaiyer, Stephanie Carmack, and Nathalia Peixoto, and graduate student Matthew Scherbel, is working with Brightline Interactive to examine the effects of recovery cues, using virtual reality simulations, on neurophysiological regulation to prevent drug relapse.

The work is supported by a Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Institutes of Health. Brightline Interactive is a team of creative technologists that designs and builds virtual reality experiences, specializing in rapid development of custom end-to-end hardware/software solutions. These solutions use immersive virtual reality/augmented reality/extended reality technologies and techniques, such as motion, object, optical and facial tracking, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and sensor-integration, to allow for simulated utilization of physical objects in virtual reality environments for simulation and training purposes.

Matto is a social worker who worked with individuals in recovery from substance use before she became a university professor. She has used that practice experience to guide her research with diverse clinical populations.

“It’s my favorite population to work with,” said Matto, who is an associate professor in the Department of Social Work in the College of Health and Human Services.

Matto found that the first weeks in recovery are a tricky time for individuals in recovery, with a critical need for support to maintain their sobriety goals, especially when it comes to dealing with triggers, those sensory reminders of their substance use within their environment that might cause a relapse.

“It takes more than a strong commitment to be sober,” Matto says. “You may not be able to think your way through [when triggered].”

She said research shows that intensity of craving experience can still be quite high even after two months of abstinence. This led Matto to think about the importance of real-time interventions to support recovery when these individuals leave treatment.

“We are interested in understanding how we can disrupt the drug trigger-craving-relapse chain by using customized recovery cue substitutions—positive stimuli associated with recovery—to regulate the brain and body’s reaction to the people, places, objects and other daily stimuli that increase relapse risk for people in recovery,” she said.

The intervention the team is working on with Brightline involves virtual reality and having the person wearing the VR goggles interact with triggering objects while being able to assess their physiological response.

The team did some preliminary work this summer with students in Mason’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program. One of their interns, Noah Egan, a 2020 Brentsville District High School graduate, taught himself how to use the game engine Unity in order to create what is very similar to a 3D video game in which a person would interact with an addiction trigger or cue.

“We have some new ideas that haven’t been used in social work before, which is the point of adding engineering to a community problem,” said Peixoto, an associate professor in the Volgenau School of Engineering who mentored Egan. “[This intervention] is a little bit more than game design and a little bit more than computer science, because we want to measure physiological variables.”

The Brightline-Mason team plans to build on this initial work and create an in-session interactive VR task that tracks the participant's gaze in order to understand where they are fixating attention on each recovery cue. From this data, the team can assess what imagery is particularly attractive to each participant and identify which cues cause a particular physiological reaction.

The results may lead to the development of a nonpharmacological mobile recovery support system to help individuals manage cravings and avoid relapse.

“I am really excited about this project, not only because it addresses such a critical issue, as we have seen increases in substance use during pandemic, but also because it represents an extraordinary collaboration among technology industry professionals, university faculty, community clinical care, and individuals in recovery,” said Rebekah Hersch, interim associate vice president for research and innovation at Mason. “As with nearly all complex problems, it takes a multidisciplinary team to tackle the problem and make a real difference in the lives of so many people.”

Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions

Through NSF funding, graduate students and community partners find novel solutions to public health problems

See how CASBBI works to change the world

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Student team improves substance use disorder app thanks to venture capital funding

In This Story

Learn more about CASBBI

Related News

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Using ultrasound technology to improve the lives of amputees

Using virtual reality to support addiction recovery

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