The UH College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of Health and Human
Performance Assistant Professor Pranav J. Parikh and Cullen College of Engineering Professor Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal have been awarded the NIH R25 Research Education grant titled “Neuromotor Skill Advancement
for Post-baccalaureates (NSAP).”
Their project, worth $768,000 for the next 5 years, is based on the National Science
Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Building Reliable
Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnology (IUCRC BRAIN) at the University of Houston.
Its overall goal is to provide didactic and hands-on activities focusing on the development
of highly specialized and highly sought-after technical skills to study the brain.
The NSAP program hopes to complement and enhance the training of therapists, clinical
and research fellows, and orthotists and prosthetists from a diverse community for
neurorehabilitation and neuroengineering research with the goals of improving health
and well-being of children and adults and meeting the nation’s biomedical, behavioral
and clinical research needs using emergent technologies.
Trainees will be recruited nationally through announcements and advertisements sent
to organizations for groups that are underrepresented in clinical and biomedical research.
A group of 10 trainees in the science, bioengineering, neuroscience or medical fields
at the postbaccalaureate level will be recruited to participate 10+ weeks in the summer
months in workshops and seminars, didactic work and immersive collaborative and personalized
research experiences.
Experts at Texas Medical Center (TMC) institutions, including Texas Woman’s University,
The University of Texas Medical Branch, TIRR Memorial Hermann and the faculty from
the NSF BRAIN Center at the University of Houston will work together on NSAP. Leveraging
these unique facilities and their extensive expertise and mentoring experience will
provide state-of-the-art training in neuroimaging, neuromodulation, and neurorehabilitation
engineering.
In addition, faculty mentors of the NSAP program represent leading researchers in
the fields of neurorehabilitation and neuroengineering: Jose L. Contreras-Vidal, Ph.D.
and Pranav J. Parikh, MBBS, Ph.D. are the primary investigators for this project.
Other faculty mentors include Stacey L. Gorniak, Ph.D.; Shih-Chiao Tseng, PT, Ph.D.;
Jinsook Roh, Ph.D.; Charles S. Layne, Ph.D.; Luca Pollonini, Ph.D.; Christina Bickley,
PT, Ph.D., BOCO, C/NDT Shuo-Hsiu Chang, PT, M.S., Ph.D.; Gerard E. Francisco, M.D.