NYU WIRELESS Professor Jonathan Viventi and NYU Medical School Professor Robert Froemke, were recently awarded $250,000 by NYU in its newly created “Grand Challenge” competition to promote significant research that has the potential to solve major national or global problems.  Viventi and Froemke’s project, entitled “Smart Neuroprosthetics: Brain-Machine Interfaces for the 21^st Century” seeks to develop a new generation of powerful wireless implantable devices that could be used to manipulate prosthetic limbs, improve auditory prosthetic implants, or improve impaired learning, memory, or social cognition.

Viventi and Froemke will seek to build on technology already in its infancy. Current implantable devices are large, use too many wires, and interact imperfectly with the brain. NYU-Tandon is already working on smaller, high-resolution, wearable, and bendable device arrays. The Grand Challenge team will work to make the devices wireless and ultimately usable for medical purposes. This technology could also open a new window into understanding brain function.

The aim of the Grand Challenge is to create ambitious but achievable goals that harness technology to solve important societal and health problems.

NYU’s competition was created in response to President Obama’s call on universities and other institutions to identify and initiate Grand Challenges that would promote great research. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/grand-challenges)

Thomas Kalil, Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said, “The President has called on research universities, companies, and foundations to join him in identifying Grand Challenges to promote scientific breakthroughs that advance national and global priorities, and to help create new industries and jobs that we can only dream about today. We commend NYU for launching a competition for research projects targeted at Grand Challenges, and we look forward to the seeing the results of the winners’ research.”

“NYU faculty and alumni have helped created some of the world’s most important technological breakthroughs, from the creation of the telegraph to the treatment for polio,” said Paul Horn, NYU senior vice provost for research. “The Grand Challenge demonstrates that NYU remains at the forefront of technology and supports research that can capture the public imagination and benefit all mankind.”

The $250,000 grant is unrestricted seed funding to help the project get off the ground. The University will also help the winning team generate support from philanthropies, individuals, foundations, governments, and corporations to continue their research. The seed money comes from the proceeds of spin-offs that used technologies and discoveries developed by the NYU faculty.

Thirty-two teams comprised of NYU faculty submitted applications in the six-month competition for the Grand Challenge awards. The final two awards were made by a distinguished external advisory committee. The applications were judged on validity, usability, originality, and affordability.