“This cooperative project will help bolster Kentucky’s economy, create jobs and put the Commonwealth at the forefront of automation and human-machine interaction,” said UofL president Neeli Bendapudi and UK president Eli Capilouto, in a joint statement.

The project, titled the , will harness the collective research power of 40 multidisciplinary researchers from UofL, UK, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Somerset Community College, Transylvania University and Western Kentucky University.

A video explaining the KAMPERS project can be found .

The research results will have applications in the construction of components for robotic and autonomous systems in areas as diverse as elder care, home service, health care, education and other collaborative human-robot interactions.

The research for the KAMPERS project will fall into three categories: materials, device configuration and systems. Co-investigators of research include UK professors Seth DeBolt and John Anthony, and UofL electrical and computer engineering professor Dan Popa. Popa and his team are working in all three research areas, with a special emphasis on collaborative robotics.

“As we introduce more robots in the manufacturing environment, they have to be more intelligent and they have to be chaperoned and taught by the workers —in a way that doesn’t take jobs but creates more opportunities,” Popa said. “I think the frontier is to push into more and more applications for medium to small companies that can use this technology. This will do a lot for robotics in Kentucky and give us a nationally visible research presence.”

UofL’s portion of the grant is $5.3 million. Fifteen UofL faculty and 15 to 20 students and staff will work on the project, according to Popa. He says the collaboration could also pave the way for a new robotics institute at UofL.

KAMPERS will hire, educate and mentor eight new faculty, and an average of five post docs and 28 graduate students per year. It will offer opportunities for undergraduate researchers, creating a ripple effect of experience throughout the state and country.

The grant also aims to increase underrepresented minorities in these fields, including African Americans, Hispanics and women.

Bendapudi has appointed a to solicit suggestions from the UofL family and come up with five to 10 recommendations.

“This is an important step in our quest to raise UofL’s reputation,” Bendapudi said. “Help us figure out where we can maximize our talent and resources to make the biggest difference in people’s lives.”

A “grand challenge” should include participation by multiple disciplines, build upon UofL’s existing strengths and have opportunities for external investment. Those chosen will become top priorities in the university’s research mission.

Some of the areas already submitted for consideration by the subcommittee include renewable energy, environmental health, aging, additive manufacturing and artificial intelligence and the future of work.

Faculty, staff and students are being asked to submit ideas to help shape the future of UofL and beyond.��

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Three UofL faculty – Dan Popa, Karla Welch and Greg Barnes – along with a researcher from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, have received a four year, $1.2 million award from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to study robots’ impact on autistic kids. UofL is one of a handful of institutions to receive a joint NSF/NIH grant through a program called Smart and Connected Health.����

Popa said the grant will allow his Next Generation robotics team and the UofL Autism Center to do three things:

• Build a new robot that’s more interactive and intelligent;
• Develop a new quantitative scale, using the robot, to more accurately determine where children fall on the autism spectrum;
• Develop more focused, adaptive therapies for each child.

Popa said the goal is to come up with a robot that’s a diagnostic tool as well as a “friend” to kids with autism beginning at age six. Currently, Popa said, there is no objective, quantitative way to assess the severity of a child’s autism. He thinks robotics and artificial intelligence could change that.

A robot could potentially be used in group and one-on-one therapy sessions with the child also taking their friendly, non-threatening partner home with them. The robot could continue to collect data on the child’s behavior and cognition at home.

“Studies show autistic kids interact with technology as well as non-autistic children by the time they’re 18 years old” Popa said. “If we give them a robot it could help them develop social skills comparable to the robot and, ultimately, other kids.”

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have too many connections between the part of the brain that controls their motor skills and the part that controls their sensory, social and emotional skills.

“With the help of robot�� peers, we seek to understand not only how these areas influence motor actions but also how those connections influence the social skills, communication, perception of sensations and expression of emotions in people with autism,” said Barnes, director of the UofL Autism Center. “These advances will help us better understand how to design therapies, using technology, for people with ASD.”

Check out the previous ���Ի��� about UofL research on robots and children with autism.

The bad news is that the courses needed for degrees in those fields — like calculus, chemistry or physics — are tough and some students wind up punting their dream. According to a , roughly half the students who declared a STEM major at the start of college left that field either by dropping out of college or switching to a non-STEM major.

Hoping to stem that tide, researchers at the University of Louisville J.B. Speed School of Engineering obtained two research grants to find better tools to measure engagement and improve memory of students in STEM course classrooms.

Aly Farag, director of UofL’s Computer Vision and Image Processing Laboratory, wants to solve the problem using biometrics. Farag has secured a $300,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to measure students’ attention using a biometric sensor network. The BSN would include wall-mounted cameras and webcams already in place in many modern classrooms.

According to Farag, the BSN would use state of the art methods of deep learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence to measure and quantify attention, telling a professor in real time if the students are bored or anxious – signs they are failing to understand the material being taught and jeopardizing their pursuit of a STEM degree.

“We’re going to find out if using new, biometric technology can strengthen our teaching and our ability to keep students engaged in the classroom” Farag said.

Farag’s team includes Tom Tretter, Marci DeCaro, Chris Foreman and Asem Ali from education, psychology, engineering and Farag’s lab, respectively.

While Farag’s research is aimed at determining ways to immediately measure student engagement in the classroom, his Speed School colleague Pat Ralston is working on improving students’ memory. Ralston, chair of the Department of Engineering Fundamentals, has a $596,000 grant to study “spaced retrieval,” a teaching strategy that’s been shown to work in the lab and in a small number of real classrooms.

“Spaced retrieval improves student retention of academic material by spacing out when students answer questions about the material, for example, answering three questions over three weeks instead of all on one day,” Ralston said. “This should make students better prepared for future courses that require them to remember what they learned in past courses.”

Ralston plans to train professors in spaced retrieval teaching methods and reach 1,600 UofL students in a variety of STEM courses throughout the next three years. She’s working with Keith Lyle, professor in Psychology and Brain Sciences, to measure students’ ability to remember key pieces of information and, hopefully, improve the likelihood they will keep pursuing a degree in a STEM field.����������

One of the secondary health effects of severe spinal cord injury can be a dramatic drop in blood pressure, for example. The Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center at UofL has received a grant to study whether epidural stimulation might stabilize the blood pressure and it appears to work in some patients, including Stefanie Putnam. Check out more about her story below:

“This is great news for our community and those touched by UofL’s research��in medicine, education, engineering, art and countless other disciplines,”��said Dr. Robert S. Keynton, UofL’s interim executive vice president for research and innovation. “Our faculty work tirelessly to secure the funding needed to explore, test and translate that research, so it can change, improve and even save lives.”

Preliminary numbers from Keynton’s office show UofL faculty received more than $152 million in competitive awards last fiscal year, an increase of $14 million over the previous year.

Among the projects receiving grants:

• $18.1 million/5 years from the National Institutes of Health for a biomedical research center. Professor Nigel Cooper in Anatomical Science/Neurobiology runs the center which includes building a capacity for bioinformatics to serve the needs of genomics researchers at universities across the state.
• $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation to develop a small additive manufacturing platform using microrobots and 3D printing. Speed School of Engineering professor Dan Popa secured the grant. Popa directs the Next Generation Systems robotics lab.
• $1.5 million from the Kentucky Department of ����ֱ�� to support systems for improving students’ academic and behavioral (disciplinary) outcomes in every Kentucky school district. College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development faculty Terry Scott received the grant.

UofL faculty received a preliminary total of 950 grants from federal and state government as well as private sources in 2018-19.

The camp brought local high schoolers to campus to design tools for such a purpose.��Design the Future began four years ago at Stanford University, and UofL is the first school outside of California to participate. The camp’s mission is to combine empathy, engineering, and public service for high school participants.

Donna Fox, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, has trouble zipping up the boots she needs to stabilize her ankles. A group of campers designed a tool with hooks that allow her to zip up the boots much quicker.

“Oh my gosh, it’s amazing,” said Fox. “I just told [the students] what would normally take me about 20 minutes took about three seconds.”��

“I really, really love helping people and impacting the community in a positive way,” said Connor Strothman, a participating student. “And this was something that combined both of those things.”

Check out more from the camp:

Burrell found disparities in the way women are treated in ROTC programs. He outlined ways the Army can foster more inclusion and promotion of women while improving his own teaching and willingness to speak up for change on his campus.��

Now, the first-generation college student and graduate of the University of Louisville will fulfill his dream, taking a job with Jefferson County Public Schools this fall. Watts says he wants to set an example for children who have dreams of their own.��

As she marks her first full year at UofL this month, the former provost at the University of Kansas says she’s overwhelmed and pleasantly surprised by the support she’s received here from students, employees, alumni and the community. Bendapudi is most excited about the ongoing strategic planning process which, she says, will reflect UofL’s values and set the university on a solid course for the future.

Check out more of what she had to say as she reflects on Year One at UofL:

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