UMass professor wins $900,000 in grants

DARTMOUTH – Four National Science Foundation grants have been awarded to University of Massachusetts Dartmouth professor Honggang Wang for wireless monitoring of premature infants, and other health initiatives.
Wang, an electrical and computer engineering assistant professor, received $900,227 in awards for his research.
He will use the funds to improve understanding of emerging wireless networks, increase reliability of wireless multimedia applications, enhance delivery of accurate and secure medical information, and design a wearable body sensor system for premature infants.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in eight infants is born prematurely. These high risk infants require specialized monitoring not only in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, but also at home.
Wang’s project aims to design a wearable biosensor system with wireless network for remote detection and anticipation of life threatening events in infants, such as apnea (pause in breathing), bradycardia (slowness of heart) and hypoxia (oxygen desaturation). The proposed research goes beyond current health monitoring systems by incorporating body sensor networks and advanced signal processing, tailored specifically to an individual infant’s physiology.
Essential to Wang’s research is advancing understanding of emerging wireless networking. His work has potential to advance the wireless network field by meeting future data capacity demand and goals of quality of service, significantly impacting complex network application in the a number of areas including transportation, disaster recovery and healthcare.
One of Wang’s grants will support his research efforts in developing a cyber-security system for mobile health. This is a joint project among UMass Dartmouth, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and University of Arkansas Little Rock.
Nonintrusive, ambulatory health monitoring of patient vital signs over wireless networks is an economical solution to rising costs of healthcare. However, lack of security in the transfer of health and medical information remains prevalent. The goal of this particular project will be to develop a lightweight wireless authentication system to ensure real-time delivery of accurate and secure medical information.

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