IUPUI informatics faculty awarded funding for prestigious Signature Centers
January 29, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS – Several IU School of Informatics faculty members have received funding to establish Signature Centers on Android Science, and Systems Biology for Personalized Medicine. Proposals submitted by teams of informatics professors, led by Karl F. MacDorman and Jake Y. Chen, were two of the ten selected recently to receive Signature Center funding. The Signature Center Initiative is IUPUI’s premiere, highly selective research agenda.
“Awarding of these two Signature Centers in the School of Informatics is timely and critical as the School is aggressively building upon its core values in establishing multidisciplinary research and graduate programs,” said Mathew Palakal, associate dean of graduate studies and research. “Both Centers are highly multidisciplinary in nature and will bring high visibility at local, national and international levels.”
The Android Science Center will be the first laboratory of its kind in the United States, where scientists will build and test more functional and realistic androids and explore human-android interactions. Human beings respond to androids in much the same way they do to one another. Researchers in the center will use androids to explore human cognition and learning, and identify areas where androids may be utilized to enhance the quality of human life. Principal Investigator: Karl MacDorman, School of Informatics, and several Co-Investigators from the Purdue School of Engineering at IUPUI.
The Indiana Center for Systems Biology and Personalized Medicine will encourage translational research that brings new discoveries in biology to clinical applications. Center research scientists will collaborate to enhance research in the genetic and cellular function of biological systems. The center will connect these researchers with clinicians and surgeons treating diseases such as breast and lung cancer, in order to speed the translation of the latest advances in understanding disease biology into cost-effective, personalized diagnosis and treatment of patients. Principal Investigator: Jake Chen, School of Informatics. Informatics faculty members Yaoqi Zhou, Narayanan Perumal and Pedro Romero are Co-Investigators, as well as additional faculty from the IU School of Medicine.
Tony Faiola, associate professor of informatics, is a Co-Principal Investigator for a third IUPUI Signature Center, The Transportation Active Safety Institute, exploring the use of active safety systems in passenger vehicles.
“The Signature Center Initiative is a cornerstone of IUPUI's Academic Plan,” Uday Sukhatme, IUPUI executive vice chancellor said in a campus news release. "It clearly highlights the importance of the research component of the campus mission, and is a significant investment in the drive to further raise IUPUI's research agenda and academic strength.”
IUPUI faculty submitted 54 proposals, the quality of which were very high, making selection a difficult task, said Sukhatme. The ten approved proposals involve participation from faculty in many schools, since multidisciplinary collaboration was an important criterion for approval.
For additional information and to arrange for interviews contact Neal G. Moore, 317.278.9208, ngmoore@iupui.edu.
