Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Auditory Bioengineering

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。听觉是一种极其重要的能力，它使人能够与外部世界联系起来。听力丧失对个人有影响吗？健康，功能，生活质量和死亡率。目前的估计是，听力损失导致的额外医疗费用在美国从33亿美元到128亿美元不等，在全世界超过7500亿美元。美国国家科学院最近的一份报告强调，有必要认识到听力损失是一个主要的公共卫生问题。这项计划资助汇集了来自莱斯大学、贝勒医学院、南加州大学和俄勒冈健康科学大学的不同研究团队。该团队将在听觉神经科学、人工耳蜗、语音感知和直接连接神经元的设备方面拥有互补的专业知识。该团队将参与一系列会议和活动，为听觉生物工程工程研究中心奠定基础。该中心将致力于开发新技术，扩大工程人员队伍，并通过支持聋哑人和听力障碍者，特别是服务不足人群的成员，培养多元化和包容性的文化。在科学层面上，精确电刺激神经元技术的工程进展将广泛应用于视网膜植入物、听觉植入物和深部脑刺激器等设备。认识到助听器和人工耳蜗植入的局限性，规划团队将寻求通过涉及多个工程学科的融合方法实现变革性工程，从而彻底改变当前的听力康复技术。主要的科学目标将是开发下一代听觉植入物，它与螺旋神经节细胞更紧密地连接，更忠实地编码声音，更小，更容易使用，更经济。在这项拨款的过程中，计划小组将严格评估最近技术进步的潜力，以改善听力保健，并确定更多的参与者来进行中心规模的研究。这将通过在德克萨斯州休斯顿、加利福尼亚州洛杉矶和俄勒冈州波特兰举行的一系列会议来完成。该小组将与利益相关者——包括人工耳蜗植入者、听力卫生保健专业人员、听力卫生保健政策制定者和听力卫生保健需求目前未得到满足的低收入个人——进行接触。团队将采用循证策略招募和发展中心领导团队。该小组还将与主要的人工耳蜗制造商合作，并确定其他工业合作伙伴。本提案的智力焦点将驻留在以下重点领域的潜力的关键评估，以作为听觉生物工程融合研究的基础。主旨1：下一代听觉植入的使能技术。在此推动下，工程技术的最新进展，如用于神经接口的碳纳米纤维电极将集成到生物医学微系统中，以产生下一代听觉植入物的创新设计。主旨二：听觉生物工程的语音感知。在这一主旨中，语音感知的认知方面的最新进展将被利用来确定需要传递给听觉植入物的相关信息，以及如何基于已知的神经编码最好地提供这些信息，同时考虑到不同的语言被调谐到不同的声学特征。主旨3：听觉康复的全球健康和差异研究。这一重点将寻求调查和评估如何通过助听器和人工耳蜗来扩大获得听觉康复的机会，特别是对服务不足的人群。目标是建立听觉生物工程的ERC，为听觉研究者、神经工程师、听力学家和临床医生提供全国性的资源。该中心位于德克萨斯州休斯顿的中心位置，将在全国范围内推广，并作为汇集患者群体的一种方式，用于研究听觉康复的结果和差异。该建议将填补劳动力发展的关键需求，培养更多的听力和言语研究界面的学生，他们准备使用现代工程方法进行听觉康复。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.The sense of hearing is a critically important ability that enables an individual to relate to the external world. Loss of hearing affects an individual?s health, function, quality of life and mortality. Current estimates are that hearing loss results in excess medical costs ranging from $3.3 to $12.8B in the United States, and over $750B worldwide. A recent report from the National Academies highlighted the need to recognize hearing loss as a major public health concern. This planning grant brings together a diverse team of researchers from Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Southern California and Oregon Health Science University. This team will have complementary expertise in auditory neuroscience, cochlear implants, speech perception and devices that connect directly to neurons. This team will engage in a series of meeting and activities that will lay the foundation for an Engineering Research Center in Auditory Bioengineering. The proposed Center will work to develop new technologies, expand the engineering workforce and foster a culture of diversity and inclusion by supporting the deaf and hard of hearing, especially members of underserved populations. At the scientific level, the engineering advances in technologies for precise electrical stimulation of neurons will be broadly applicable to devices such as retinal implants, auditory implants and deep brain stimulators. Recognizing the limitations of hearing aids and cochlear implants, the planning team will seek to revolutionize current hearing rehabilitative technology through transformative engineering enabled by a convergent approach involving several engineering disciplines. The major scientific goal will be to develop a next generation auditory implant that more intimately connects to spiral ganglion cells, more faithfully encodes sound, is smaller and easier to use, and is more economical. During the course of this grant, the planning team will critically evaluate the potential of recent technological advances to improve hearing health care and identify additional participants to perform center-scale research. This will be accomplished through a series of meetings held in in Houston, TX, Los Angeles, CA and Portland, OR. The team will engage stakeholders - including individuals with cochlear implants, hearing health care professionals, policy makers in hearing health care, and low-income individuals whose hearing health care needs are currently unmet. The team will used evidence-based strategies to recruit and develop the center leadership team. The team will also engage major cochlear implant manufacturers and identify other industrial partners.The intellectual focus of this proposal will reside in a critical evaluation of the potential for the following thrust areas to serve as a foundation for convergent research in Auditory Bioengineering. Thrust 1: Enabling Technologies for Next Generation Auditory Implants. In this thrust, recent advances in engineering technologies such as carbon nanofiber electrodes for neural interfacing will be integrated into biomedical microsystems to produce an innovative design for a next generation auditory implant. Thrust 2: Speech Perception for Auditory Bioengineering. In this thrust, recent advances the cognitive aspects of speech perception will be harnessed to determine the relevant information that needs to be passed to auditory implants and how best to provide that information based on what is known about the neural code, with consideration that different languages are tuned to different acoustic features. Thrust 3: Global Health and Disparities Research in Auditory Rehabilitation. This thrust will seek to investigate and evaluate ways to expand access to auditory rehabilitation with hearing aids and cochlear implants, especially for underserved population.The goal will be to develop an ERC in Auditory Bioengineering that will serve a national resource for auditory researchers, neuroengineers, audiologists and clinicians. With a central location in Houston, TX, the center will have national outreach and serve as a way to pool patient populations for studies on outcomes and disparities in auditory rehabilitation. This proposal will fill a key need in workforce development in training more students at the interface of hearing and speech research, who are prepared to employ modern engineering approaches for auditory rehabilitation.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.