Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Digital Twins in Engineering and Medicine

规划资助：工程与医学数字孪生工程研究中心

• 批准号: 1937129
• 负责人: Charbel Farhat
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1937129&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

Decisions are made every day about medical procedures such as surgeries or drug treatments: they affect and condition the future of patients. They are based on established best practices, but do not necessarily account for the individual traits of a person. A similar decision-making process can be found in complex engineering systems, or the maintenance schedule of an aircraft. During the last decade however,it has been recognized that the transition to personalized medicine will potentially enhance the life of patients and increase the quality of clinical care, as well as potentially lower the overall healthcare costs. A similar observation has been made regarding complex engineering systems, with a call to develop cyber-physical systems and dynamic data processes that use massive amounts of data to drive individual smart machines. The practical realization of this transition requires 1) the development of a new technology for extracting meaningful information from data and interpreting it correctly, 2) an accompanying plan for educating the future workforce in this global area, and 3) the identification and resolution of the associated ethical and privacy issues. This planning grant will develop the vision for the proposed Center to influence this transformation during the next two decades by influencing the health monitoring and decision-making processes of living and non-living physical entities in these important areas using digital twins. These are digital replicas of living and non-living physical entities. Their underlying concept integrates artificial intelligence, machine learning, and software analytics with physics-based modeling. Their main purpose is to act as living digital simulation models that are continuously trained and updated to be able to mirror the states and behaviors of their physical counterparts.This grant will focus on planning the development of a Center that will integrate research groups working on core technologies for digital twins, such as algorithms, hardware, software,physics-based machine learning, and mathematics and statistics, with counterparts working on three significantly different application areas: aircraft health monitoring; customized weight loss programs; and qualification of metal 3D printed parts. This integration will define the common requirements for digital twins, advance these application areas and explore their societal and ethical implications. This will establish a multi-disciplinary dialog between mathematicians, engineers, medical doctors, lawyers and philosophers, and a convergent vision for how to shape the future of this technology. The grant will enable an Exploratory Workshop that will serve to identify the broad stakeholder community in academia and the corporate world and government, form the team and management structure, and most importantly, define a multi-disciplinary, convergent vision for a future Engineering Research Center in Digital Twins for Engineering and Medicine. The dialog that this planning grant will foster on the subjects of digital twins, engineering workforce development, diversity and culture of inclusion, and innovation ecosystem will build new connections between a diverse group of researchers and practitioners from different institutions and disciplines and identify the potential members of the Center. Additionally, explicit efforts are planned to engage partners from institutions that serve primarily underrepresented minorities in the activities of this planning grant. The impact of the newly formed connections with a shared interest in digital twins, in line with the idea of fostering a convergent research, has the potential to spring other areas of collaboration in the future.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

每天都在做出关于手术或药物治疗等医疗程序的决定：它们影响和制约着患者的未来。它们基于既定的最佳做法，但不一定考虑到一个人的个人特点。在复杂的工程系统或飞机的维护计划中也可以找到类似的决策过程。然而，在过去的十年中，人们已经认识到，向个性化医疗的过渡将有可能提高患者的生活质量，提高临床护理质量，并有可能降低整体医疗成本。对于复杂的工程系统也有类似的观察，呼吁开发网络物理系统和动态数据流程，使用大量数据来驱动单个智能机器。这一转变的实际实现需要：1）开发一种新技术，从数据中提取有意义的信息并正确解释它; 2）一个教育这一全球领域未来劳动力的配套计划; 3）识别和解决相关的道德和隐私问题。该规划拨款将为拟议的中心制定愿景，通过使用数字孪生影响这些重要领域中生物和非生物物理实体的健康监测和决策过程，在未来二十年内影响这一转变。这些是生物和非生物物理实体的数字复制品。其基本概念将人工智能、机器学习和软件分析与基于物理的建模相结合。他们的主要目的是作为活的数字仿真模型，不断进行训练和更新，以便能够反映其物理对应物的状态和行为。这笔赠款将重点规划一个中心的发展，该中心将整合研究数字孪生核心技术的研究小组，如算法，硬件，软件，基于物理的机器学习，以及数学和统计，与同行一起工作在三个显著不同的应用领域：飞机健康监测;定制的减肥计划;和金属3D打印部件的资格认证。这种整合将定义数字孪生的共同要求，推进这些应用领域，并探索其社会和伦理影响。这将在数学家、工程师、医生、律师和哲学家之间建立一个多学科的对话，并就如何塑造这项技术的未来达成一致。这笔赠款将使探索性研讨会，将有助于确定学术界和企业界和政府的广泛利益相关者社区，形成团队和管理结构，最重要的是，为未来的工程研究中心定义一个多学科，融合的愿景工程和医学数字双胞胎。该计划资助将促进数字双胞胎，工程劳动力发展，多样性和包容性文化以及创新生态系统等主题的对话，将在来自不同机构和学科的不同研究人员和从业人员之间建立新的联系，并确定该中心的潜在成员。此外，还计划作出明确努力，让主要为代表性不足的少数群体服务的机构的伙伴参与这项规划赠款的活动。新形成的对数字孪生子有共同兴趣的联系所产生的影响，符合促进融合研究的理念，有可能在未来推动其他领域的合作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。