Clark School Faculty Members to Receive Two Seed Grants

Two proposals from the A. James Clark School of Engineering have been selected to receive $75,000 grants from the joint Research and Innovation Seed Grant Program, which promotes collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

The first project, “Touch-Free Manipulation of Live Cancer Cells to Observe their Tumor-Formation and Drug Response Behavior,” will include the work of Professor Benjamin Shapiro. Shapiro holds a joint appointment with the Clark School's Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BioE) and the Institute for Systems Research (ISR). He will be partnering with Stuart Martin, Associate Professor of Physiology at the UMB School of Medicine.

Jaydev P. Desai, Professor of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Director of the Robotics, Automation, and Medical Systems (RAMS) Laboratory, and Cornelia Fermuller, Associate Research Scientist for the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, will work on a second project, “A Robotic Grasping and Vision (GraspVis) System for Stroke Rehabilitation.” They will be collaborating with Kelly Westlake, UMB Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science.

Established in 2013, the joint Research and Innovation Seed Grant Program fosters research partnerships in fields including but not limited to personalized medicine, bioinformatics, bioengineering, complex therapeutics, health care optimization, public health informatics, health information technology and health science research. The program, which intends to bolster the institutions’ goals in research and innovation, selected seven proposals out of 66 applications.

Published July 10, 2013