Sylvia Herbert receives young investigator award from the Office of Naval Research

Sylvia Herbert is one of 32 researchers in the United States to receive an award from the 2022 Young Investigator Program at the Office of Naval Research. 

The highly competitive, early career award recognizes prior academic achievement and potential for significant scientific breakthrough. 

Herbert is an assistant professor in the UC San Diego Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. She leads the Safe and Autonomous Systems Lab at the Jacobs School and is part of the UC San Diego Contextual Robotics Institute. The research project she was awarded for focuses on constructing and adapting control barrier functions for guaranteed safe control of autonomous systems.

Skywalker Legacy : building a moving prosthetic hand

By Kiran Kumar

A team of undergraduate students in the Biomedical Engineering Society at UC San Diego is undertaking an out-of-this-galaxy challenge: designing, building and testing a low-cost prosthetic hand that can be controlled seamlessly by the user’s own mind. The goal for the project, called Skywalker Legacy, is to enable simple procedures involved in day-to-day life — including moving individual fingers, holding and moving objects — for those who use prosthetics. 

Students in the Biomedical Engineering
Society's Skywalker Legacy project.

To build this non-invasive prosthetic, there are a number of challenges the team of students will need to address, including mechanical and software challenges. Darin Tsui, a bioengineering undergraduate student, illustrated how the team’s model would mechanically imitate a hand’s physiology. At the bottom of a hand, there are muscle nerves. Stimulating the muscle nerve pulls at the joint to move a finger. 

“To mimic this, we’re using linear actuators as the muscle nerves, and the hinges act as joints to move the fingers,” said Tsui. 

The flexibility of the selected material, likely resin, would impact whether hinges are necessary, or if a wire from the linear actuators to the fingertip would suffice. 

An early prototype of one 
of the prosthetic fingers
the students plan to develop.

Additionally, there are a number of software challenges which Skywalker Legacy will face. Charlie Anderson, a bioinformatics student, said getting individual digit control is going to be quite difficult. In order to detect messenger signals from the body, they will be using non-invasive surface electrodes strategically placed on each relevant muscle group in the subject’s forearm. This is a well established method referred to as electromyography. These signals will have to be delivered to the linear actuators, acting as the muscle nerves for the hand. Since these signals are taken non-invasively, they are very general. To translate these signals, Anderson and his team will use a machine learning program which will output a digit number that corresponds to a specific finger. Then, the hardware team will translate this output to stimulate the linear actuator of the particular finger.

Jay Chen, a bioengineering student and the project co-chair, said he has a lot of confidence in this team. He explained that the project name, Skywalker Legacy, originated from the majority of the team being self-proclaimed Star Wars nerds. He knew that this had to be a tribute to the Skywalkers as, “two out of three of them have lost an arm.”

The team hopes to have a functioning prototype by May or June, when they will conduct functionality tests. They hope that next year, they can expand on the project and further the Skywalker Legacy project.

What's it like to participate in autonomous car races in Indy and CES?

Over the past several months, UC San Diego engineering, computer science, and data science students had the opportunity to participate in not one, but two, first-of-their-kind autonomous car races. Partnering with the University of Hawaii on the AI Racing Tech team, students participated in the first ever autonomous high speed car race at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indy 500. Then, the team traveled to Las Vegas to compete in the first head-to-head, high-speed autonomous car race held during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). 

What was it like to participate in these high profile events as a student? UC San Diego computer science master's student Siddharth Saha shares some quick thoughts: 

Siddharth Saha, right, stands in front of the
full-sized race car he and other students
turned into an autonomous vehicle.

1) What do you study at UC San Diego?

-For the majority of the competition I was doing my bachelor's in the Data Science program at UC San Diego, which I believe was very important for my role in the competitions. I am currently a master's student in Computer Science at UC San Diego.

2) How did you get involved in these autonomous car events?

-During the data science program I took part in the senior capstone project. The senior capstone had us choose a domain of interest. Professor Jack Silberman was willing to mentor students under that class and I was able to get my first exposure to autonomous vehicles from there. After that I joined student org Triton AI which was extending the work we did in the capstone, and ended up taking part in several of these autonomous car events

3) What was it like to get to participate in both races, at the famed Indy and Las Vegas tracks?

-Both were extremely thrilling. It's an experience not many college students receive, to stand in the pits of the famed tracks and warm up a full-sized race car

4) Favorite moment?

-Driving around in the Indiana Motor Speedway at 100mph+

5) Least favorite moment?

-We experienced a lot of hardware faults that were always frustrating

6) Advice for current/future students who want to participate in these type of events?

-Join Triton AI. Even now we are actively recruiting for these big events. We have several members new to robotics but who still contribute to these big competitions. Committing hours and a willingness to learn are the most important

Siebel Scholar Pamela Duran : understanding and preventing pelvic floor muscle dysfunction

 By: Kiran Kumar

Pamela Duran

UC San Diego bioengineering PhD student Pamela Duran recently received an award for best doctoral basic science research from the American Urogynecologic Society (AUGS) for her research on how repeated birth injuries impact the pelvic floor muscles.  

Duran, who is co-advised by bioengineering professor Karen Christman and Dr. Marianna Alperin, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences, is also a Siebel Scholar. 

“Pelvic floor disorders can develop later in life,” said Duran. “Years after giving birth I could see how women are really affected by these conditions. It really impacts their quality of life and I think in general, there needs to be more research into biomaterials to treat these conditions.”

 Nearly one fourth of women will experience pelvic floor disorders, making it one of the most significant women’s health issues. Some of the symptoms of these disorders include frequent urination, leaking stool or urine, constipation, descension of pelvic organs, and pain/pressure in the pelvic region and/or lower back, which can heavily impact an individual's quality of life. 

During her PhD, Duran has done research to better understand how one or repeated birth injuries impact the regenerative abilities of the pelvic floor tissue. Using an animal model, she found that after a birth injury, the pelvic floor muscle undergoes sustained inflammation, impairment in muscle anabolism and persistent extracellular matrix remodeling, leading to long-term muscle atrophy and fibrosis. Understanding the mechanisms that impact pelvic floor tissue repair will help researchers and clinicians develop treatments for faster and more effective healing. 

In addition to studying how birth injuries impact pelvic floor muscle regeneration, Duran has also done research on injectable biomaterials to help prevent pelvic floor dysfunction. She analyzed the efficacy of a minimally invasive therapy to treat the pathological alterations of the pelvic floor muscle. She injected a skeletal muscle-derived extracellular matrix hydrogel at two different therapeutic windows--either at the time of birth injury or at a delayed time point. In both studies, the biomaterial prevented pelvic floor muscle atrophy and mitigated fibrosis through modulation of immune response, augmentation of muscle regeneration pathway and native extracellular matrix remodeling. Duran is currently investigating the efficacy of the hydrogel after multiple birth injuries. 

 “Women think that if they are uncomfortable or if they got injured during childbirth that it is common; but it is not something to be ignored. This can, in the future, lead to pelvic floor disorders.”

 Though women sometimes downplay discomfort in the pelvic region after childbirth, Duran encourages women to treat these disorders as seriously as they would any other health issue. While they do, Duran and other researchers at the school will continue to spearhead cutting-edge research in this crucial women’s health area.

Themed Entertainment Association hosts Wonderland haunted maze

Students in the UC San Diego chapter of the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) hosted their third Haunted Maze on campus in November. The 500 available tickets to the Wonderland-themed event sold out in a matter of minutes. 

The haunted maze included complicated technical elements such as the Pepper's Ghost illusion technique and several animatronic features, as well as creative costumes, several-rooms worth of set design, and storyboarding for the overall flow of the event. Students in TEA spend a year planning, designing and building the maze each year.

The TEA club draws students from across campus, including many engineers, who are interested in theme park design. In addition to the annual haunted maze, students in TEA participate in national theme park design contests, meet with engineers and creatives currently working at various themed entertainment venues, and have even collaborated with larger theme parks to co-design and build new exhibits. 

Learn more and get involved: https://tea.ucsd.edu/ 

Professor emeritus Shu Chien earns accolades, asteroid

Shu Chien, a professor emeritus of bioengineering at UC San Diego, is known as a superstar: he's won the National Medal of Science and been voted into all three National Academies (Science, Medicine and Engineering) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the newly established National Academy of Inventors, for his discoveries that underpin our understanding of how blood flows in the cardiovascular system. But now, he has his very own asteroid, too! 

In recognition of his scientific contributions to the field of mechanobiology—ranging from uncovering a key reason why sedentary lifestyles can be unhealthy even with short daily bursts of exercise, to how to more efficiently screen for adverse effects of small molecule drugs in patients—the International Astronomical Union has named asteroid 2008 YX9 as Chienshu.

The Chienshu asteroid was discovered in 2008 by X.Y. Hsaiao and Q.Z. Ye, and the name was made official in September 2021. 

In addition, Chien was recently elected as a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a sister institution to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, of which he is already a member. He is also a member of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, thus making him a member of all eight U.S. and Chinese Academies. 

Chien was also named an inaugural Fellow of the International Union of Physiological Sciences' new Academy. The goal of the IUPS Academy and its 30 Fellows is to represent the diversity and excellence of physiology worldwide. The Academy is intended to serve as a resource for physiologists, as well as a source of information and contacts for journalists, funders, charities, politicians, allied health professionals or members of the public.

Learn more about Chien’s 62-year academic career here.

Edward Wang awarded NIH grant for work on smartphone-based Alzheimer's screening

Edward Wang (left), Eric Granholm (right)

Edward Wang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego who directs the Ubiquitous Data and Computing Lab, has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a smartphone app that can screen for early signs of cognitive decline indicative of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).

Wang, who has a joint appointment in the Design Lab at UC San Diego, will be leading the project with co-investigator Eric Granholm, a professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and director of the university's Center for Mental Health Technology (MHTech). The National Institute of Aging selected the team for an NIH R21, also known as the Exploratory/Development Grant, which provides support in the early and conceptual stages of a project’s development. As part of a national push towards combating the debilitating effects of AD, the National Institute of Aging looked towards funding novel ways to screen for AD through the use of digital technologies. 

In the team's proposal, titled, “Smartphone Pupillometer for At-Home Screening for Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease,” Wang and Granholm aim to leverage camera systems found in smartphones to capture pupillary responses to cognitive tests as an indicator of the integrity of a specific part of the brain, the locus coeruleus, that has been shown to be one of the first sites affected by AD-related processes. By taking advantage of the smartphone as the vehicle for conducting such a test, Wang and Granholm believe that this approach of using digital technologies to capture physiological signals has the potential of significantly driving down the cost of deploying these screening solutions widely to combat public health challenges like AD.

“By further enhancing the signals that are captured using just your phone with signal processing and machine learning, we are able to derive, what are known as, digital biomarkers,” Wang says.

This approach strongly aligns with the National Institute of Aging’s Notice of Special Interest, which states that “current biomarkers for early detection of prodromal AD [...] are costly and invasive”, and digital biomarkers “can be used to inform disease prediction and management at both the individual and populational level.”

AD is a progressive degenerative disorder of the brain and is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, with the latest statistics showing that at least five million Americans over the age of 65 suffer from the disease. Not only is it the most common form of dementia of elderly adults, it is projected that cases of AD will double by 2025. By 2050, it is projected that a total annual cost for health care for people with AD will be more than $1 trillion. AD is clearly a public health crisis.

“Our solution is based on previous findings in our research with older adults with mild cognitive impairment, where we studied how differences in pupil dilation in response to memory tests are associated with very early signs of AD,” Granholm says. “It is based on these findings that we are developing this smartphone solution.” If successful, Granholm notes, it would be possible for older adults to perform this test even in the comfort of their own homes or by their primary care providers. This is compared with what is available today, which are far more invasive solutions like PET/MRI imaging and lumbar puncture for biomarkers in the spinal fluid.

As a faculty member in the Design Lab, Wang has a particular interest in developing technologies through a lens of human centered design. Wang has had a record of inventing new smartphone-based health monitoring solutions such as hemoglobin/anemia screening, blood pressure monitoring, and ocular disease. In developing these solutions, Wang has worked with a wide range of collaborators across the world to develop and test these systems with end users to make sure that the purported solutions truly can work with the target users and in realistic conditions. “Sometimes what we find is that an idea works well in lab settings where we can control the lighting and temperature of the room, but completely fails in realistic conditions that screening tools like these have to operate under,” Wang says.

Wang working in a village in the Amazon Jungle of Peru testing his smartphone hemoglobin monitor.

In a previous workaround anemia screening, Wang worked with NGOs in Peru to bring his prototype app into villages nestled in the Amazonian Jungle, where NGO staff regularly travel to in order to perform anemia screening and treatments.

"It turns out, we never considered that the main use case for our technology is really to screen for anemia in kids under 3 years old. Although the physics still holds, behaviorally, kids at that age are so different that we basically couldn’t get the kids to stay still long enough to be able to measure them with our app,” Wang reflects. “One of the common misconceptions in engineering research is that we can always build it to work better with enough resources once a technology leaves the lab,” Wang says. “The issue with that kind of approach is that sometimes that can lead us into solutions that don’t have a chance of working. That is why human centered design being a central loop in the research is so important.”

Wang notesthat keeping the elder user base in mind is crucial in the success of this research endeavor. “One of the things I think is particularly interesting in working on digital technology for the older population is that it requires a lot more nuances around usability,” Wang explains. “Our big hope is that [our app] works with little to no training with either home care providers or with the older adults themselves.”

Wang cautions, however, that these solutions are far from ready and requires extensive research on how well such digital biomarkers can differentiate diseases and how they will ultimately serve in the entire ecosystem of healthcare. “Our research aims to solve big healthcare problems by looking for creative ways to invent new ways our society can screen and treat diseases. But this shift that brings healthcare closer to everyday life, literally into our pockets, means that we will have to be very intentional in our designs of how people will use these technologies to be not only useful, but safe as well,” he says.

Read more about Wang’s research on digital health technologies at UC San Diego.