SIE
FALL 2015SYSTEMS AND INFORMATION
ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OFBARRY HOROWITZ, PHD
Munster Professor and Chair, Department of Systems and Information Engineering
MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
I
t is an exciting time to be a member of the Systems and Information Engineering Department at the University of Virginia. Our department is integral to the School of Engineering’s strategic vision for interdisciplinary research, developing innovative solutions to society’s most pressing challenges.The School of Engineering has announced a multi-million dollar investment in cyber-physical systems, automated systems that monitor and control their environments, with applications as diverse as healthcare and transportation. The cyber-physical systems initiative involves recruiting eight new faculty members spanning multiple engineering departments. The researchers will work in a new, collaborative lab and will join more than a dozen faculty at U.Va. Engineering, including several from our department, who are already making significant
contributions to the field. The breakthroughs driven by the School of Engineering’s investment will benefit humanity, improve quality of life and expand the knowledge base. A bright and promising future is here.
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School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Address corrections Systems and Information Engineering, P.O. Box 400747, should be sent to the Department of
The Systems and Information Engineering Department was recognized by the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, for contributions in cyber-security research. The “Commonwealth of Virginia Cyber Security – Unmanned Systems Technology Showcase” highlighted the work of McAuliffe’s Virginia Cyber Security Commission. Munster Professor Barry Horowitz, Chair of the U.Va. Systems and Information Engineering Department and member of the Commission, demonstrated the group’s work with the Virginia State Police to assess the potential risk of cyber attacks on automobiles, specifically those used by emergency first responders.
The outcome of the research will be to help law enforcement agencies and other first responders establish training protocols and explore low-cost technology to assist public safety agencies with reducing the risk of cyber attacks against their vehicles, according to a release from the Governor’s office.
UVA RESEARCHERS
STEPHEN D. PATEK, PHD
Associate Professor
Systems and Information Engineering
ARTIFICIAL PANCREAS:
TRANSFORMING LIVES
THROUGH INTERDISCIPLINARY
RESEARCH
D
iabetes is a leading cause of death in the United States, which is why U.Va.’s interdisciplinary research on diabetes treatment is so important.Associate Professor Stephen Patek’s work on U.Va.’s artificial pancreas project and related technologies for advanced treatment of diabetes, in collaboration with the U.Va. School of Medicine, seeks to reduce the cognitive burden of the disease while also improving glycemic outcomes through continuous sensing of blood glucose, algorithmic assessment of treatment alternatives, and automated subcutaneous insulin infusion.
Unlike feedback control problems encountered in industrial process control, the “plant” for the artificial pancreas is a human being, who retains ultimate authority over treatment actions taken by the system, and whose opinion about the role/ authority of automation may change over time.
Over the last five years, Dr. Patek’s group has been developing a modular approach to algorithm design that allows for smooth transitions between various modes of operation including (i) “on-demand” treatment recommendations, (ii) preemptive alerts and cues that encourage the patient to take specific action, (iii) automatic control of blood glucose extremes (i.e. “control-to-range”) with the patient in charge of routine events such as meal-time injections, and (iv) full- behaviorally adapted closed-loop control. Adaptive technologies for this sort of “collaborative autonomy” will find broad application in future engineering systems, ranging from intelligent thermostats to adaptive cruise control.
The Diabetes Assistant (DiAa) smartphone-based Artificial Pancreas platform built to support the modular algorithmic architecture of [1]. The system has been tested in over 150,000 hours of use in ongoing clinical and outpatient studies.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:
“Modular closed-loop control of diabetes,” S. D. Patek, L. Magni, E. Dassau, C. Hughes-Karvetski, C. Toffanin, G. De Nicolao, S. Del Favero, M. Breton, C. Dalla Man, E. Renard, H. Zisser, F. J. Doyle, III, C. Cobelli, and B. P. Kovatchev, IEEE Trans Biomed Eng, 59(11):2986–2999, 2012.
“Fully integrated artificial pancreas in type 1 diabetes modular closed-loop glucose control main- tains near normoglycemia,” M. Breton, A. Farret, D. Bruttomesso, S. Anderson, L. Magni, S. Patek, C. Dalla Man, J. Place, S. Demartini, S. Del Favero, C. Toffanin, C. Hughes-Karvetski, E. Dassau, F. J. Doyle III, G. De Nicolao,
GREGORY J. GERLING, PHD
Associate Professor
Systems and Information Engineering
UVA RESEARCHERS
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:
Gerling, G.J., Rivest, I.I., Lesniak, D.R., Scanlon, J.R., and Wan, L., Validating a Population Model of Tactile Mechanotransduction of Slowly Adapting Type I Afferents at Levels of Skin Mechanics, Single-unit Response, and Psychophysics, IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 7(2):216-228 2014
Lesniak, D.R., Marshall, K.L., Wellnitz, S.A., Jenkins, B.A., Baba, Y., Rasband, M.N., Gerling, G.J., and Lumpkin, E.A., Computation Identifies Structural Features that Govern Neuronal Firing Properties in Slowly Adapting Touch Receptors, eLife, 3:e01448 2014
IN TOUCH WITH THE
POWER OF HAPTICS
T
he field of haptics seeks to understand how we use our sense of touch to interface with the world, and then to augment that sense through the design of technological interfaces. Although not yet as well understood as vision and hearing, a thorough understanding of our sense of touch is vital as people and machines are increasingly brought together in daily interactions.Associate Professor Gregory Gerling works on highly collaborative and interdisciplinary projects that bridge computational neuroscience, engineering, medicine and
psychology. This interdisciplinary approach is a major theme for research at the U.Va. School of Engineering and Applied Science.
His two complementary research directions are: 1) the computational analysis and modeling of how populations of touch-sensitive neurons, which are embedded in the skin, encode an object’s features into neuronal signals, which are decoded by the brain, and 2) the design and analysis of medical simulators to ensure that health practitioners’ hands-on skills are systematically trained, time-effective and highly accurate. Among other projects, he also works in designing graphical user interfaces.
We seek to understand the generation of neural action potentials from populations of hundreds of mechanosensitive afferents and their end organs, including the Merkel cell – neurite complex, embedded in layers of fingerpad skin. Our approach is to join computational models with experimental approaches to address questions not approachable by traditional studies.
University of Virginia
Department of Systems and Information Engineering School of Engineering and Applied Science P.O. Box 400747
Charlottesville, VA 22904
