An associate professor of engineering and her team at Purdue Polytechnic Institute have received a nearly $1.2 million federal grant to further develop a smart pacifier that aims to more readily detect breathing problems in newborns.
Miad Faezipour and her fellow researchers will spend four years further developing a pacifier that uses sound sensing technology and artificial-intelligence-based analysis to track the breathing of babies in real time. The device analyzes breathing sounds to assess an infant’s cardiopulmonary function and wirelessly transmits data to a parent’s phone or a physician’s laptop.
Respiratory diseases are among the leading causes of infant hospitalization, the university said in the news release, and current monitoring tools are not designed for fragile newborns.
The $1,197,891 award represents the first R01 National Institutes of Health grant that Purdue Polytechnic Institute has received, the news release said. R01 grants fund mature research projects that feature strong preliminary data to support their hypothesis.
“An NIH R01 award is a major milestone for a tenure-track faculty member,” Justin Yang, associate dean for research, said in the release. “It is extremely selective and difficult to get.”
Faezipour has taught and conducted research at Purdue since 2010 and is a core faculty member of the university’s Applied AI Research Center, which was founded last year.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham is collaborating with Purdue on the project.
The Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization has applied for a patent on the device.