Funding for the effort, dubbed Generate Advanced Manufacturing Excellence for Change (GAME Change), comes via the U.S. National Science Foundation’s inaugural Regional Innovation Engines, or NSF Engines, program. GAME Change received one of just 44 type-1 NSF Engines planning grants, qualifying it to compete for a type-2 award worth up to $160 million — the largest award NSF has ever offered.��

“UofL is proud to help lead the GAME Change coalition and work to ensure regional next-manufacturing competitiveness through research, innovation and workforce development,” said Kevin Gardner, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation. “Kentucky and this region are ripe with opportunity, and through this work, we can accelerate our strong manufacturing sector’s growth as a national leader.”��

The goal, he said, is to secure economic competitiveness throughout the Southeastern Commerce Corridor (SCC) of Kentucky and Tennessee, with a focus on next-generation and advanced manufacturing, supply chain and logistics, more durable and sustainable materials and more. Louisville alone more some 2,400 manufacturing firms in areas ranging from food and beverage to automotive, with a total workforce of more than 82,500.

As part of the coalition, UofL will leverage its manufacturing and technology expertise to provide research support and talent development to industry partners. This includes connection to the UofL-based statewide resource center, along with labs, inlcuding the multi-disciplinary Louisville Automation and Robotics Reseach Institute (), led by J.B. Speed School of Engineering researcher and GAME Change teammember, Dan Popa.��

UofL also will lead the development and launch of a manufacturing-centered venture studio, offering funding, mentoring and training to help new tech-based companies spin up and out. The venture studio will draw on programming and resources offered through , part of the Office of Research and Innovation, inclduing innovation training and funding via UofL’s eight-week startup bootcamp and a suite of focused on translating research into marketable products.��

“UofL already has a long track record of success in getting its research out into the world as new products, businesses, and more with the power to radically improve the way we live and work,” said UofL principal investigator Will Metcalf, an associate vice president for research and innovation who leads UofL New Ventures and the new venture studio. “With GAME Change, we can catalyze that earned expertise to help our regional manufacturing economy thrive.”

In addition to UofL, the GAME Change coalition includes research, education, economic development, industrial and manufacturing leaders of the SCC, spanning the I-65 and I-75 thoroughfares and the promising high-growth centers of Louisville, Lexington, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga that outline an Appalachian region in need of greater connectivity and economic resiliency.

Launched by NSF’s new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships and authorized by the “CHIPS and Science Act of 2022,” the NSF Engines program uniquely harnesses the nation’s science and technology research and development enterprise and regional-level resources. NSF Engines aspire to catalyze robust partnerships to positively impact regional economies, accelerate technology development, address societal challenges, advance national competitiveness and create local, high-wage jobs.

“These NSF Engines Development Awards lay the foundation for emerging hubs of innovation and potential future NSF Engines,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “These awardees are part of the fabric of NSF’s vision to create opportunities everywhere and enable innovation anywhere. They will build robust regional partnerships rooted in scientific and technological innovation in every part of our nation. Through these planning awards, NSF is seeding the future for in-place innovation in communities and to grow their regional economies through research and partnerships. This will unleash ideas, talent, pathways and resources to create vibrant innovation ecosystems all across our nation.”

The event, hosted by the UofL , honored faculty and staff from five schools and colleges for accomplishments in developing new technologies, working with industry and launching research-backed startups.

“We like to say UofL’s ‘igniting innovation’ — and that’s absolutely true,” said president Kim Schatzel, giving opening remarks at the event. “Since joining the UofL community, I’ve seen that our campus is full-to-bursting with creativity and ideas, some with the power to transform the way we live and work. If UofL is igniting innovation, our innovators are the spark, and the work they do has a lasting and positive impact here on our campus and well beyond.”

Six major awards were also presented, including Innovator of the Year. This year, that honor went to School of Medicine researcher Nobuyuki Matoba, recognized for his work to tackle devastating diseases, inflammatory bowel disease and cancer, through groundbreaking new vaccines, immunotherapeutics and treatments that leverage protein engineering and plant-based biotechnology.����

In addition to Matoba, major awards were also presented to:��

• • Dan Popa, of the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, who won the Catalyst Award for his work to build an environment that encourages innovation at the Louisville Automation and Robotics Research Institute (LARRI);
  • Geoff Clark, Joe Burlison and Kenneth Palmer, of the School of Medicine, who won the Industry Partnership Award for their longstanding commercialization relationship with Qualigen Therapeutics;��
  • Cheri Levinson and Christina Ralph-Nearman, of the College of Arts and Sciences, who won a Trailblazer Award for their work to develop novel virtual reality and personalized treatment tools for eating disorders and launch a startup, Awaken Digital Health Solutions, to drive them to market;
  • Kunal Kate, of the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, who won a Trailblazer Award in part for his work with the Kentucky MBDA Advanced Manufacturing Center to help minority-owned businesses leverage cutting-edge technology;��
  • Noppadon Sathitsuksanoh, of the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, who won the night’s final Trailblazer Award for his work to develop new ways of producing sustainable fuels and chemicals from waste materials;

Over the past two years, 57 of the honorees earned new patents, 28 had their technology optioned or licensed to a company and 68 were awarded innovation grants, such as or , aimed at driving technologies to market. In the past fiscal year, the work of these innovators led to one new startup, 319 agreements, 49 new patents and $15.6 million in innovation-related income.

UofL Executive Vice President for Research and Innovation Kevin Gardner, whose office organizes the event, said those numbers represent real-world impact — and more, impact that can save and improve lives.��

“The innovations our researchers are developing have the potential to diagnose, treat and cure disease and overall make the way we live and work better,” he said. “What we celebrate reflects what we value as an institution — and with awards like these, we show that we value entrepreneurship and innovation.”

The skills needed by nearly all manufacturers soon will be shaped to some degree by the rapidly accelerating robotics and machine learning revolution, including automation, robotics, additive manufacturing and artificial intelligence. RAMPS will allow UofL’s Louisville Automation and Robotics Research Institute (LARRI) and other centers to purchase additional advanced equipment, such as a robotic quadruped, and introduce future workers to these devices.

“We want to make this technology accessible for people or students who don’t necessarily have the advanced technical skills, but they are enthusiastic,” said Dan Popa, director of LARRI and lead for the RAMPS project. “They want to learn about robotics, AI and additive manufacturing, how they are used in industry and what kind of skills you need to operate this type of equipment.”

Made possible by funding secured by U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth from the U.S. Department of ����ֱ��, RAMPS aims to address workforce needs in the advanced manufacturing industry sector and enhance employment opportunities for underrepresented groups. It will allow LARRI, the Additive Manufacturing Institute of Science and Technology (AMIST) and Micro/Nano Technology Center (MNTC), all based in the at UofL, to obtain additional equipment and pilot programs to increase awareness and access to training in robotic and additive manufacturing technology over the next year.

“I’m so proud to have secured $750,000 in federal funding for UofL’s RAMPS program, which will help students excel in the industries of tomorrow,” Yarmuth said. “Manufacturing is a key sector of our local and state economy, and robotics and automation will have a tremendous impact on how businesses and industries operate moving forward. UofL is a national leader in innovative training programs, and through its RAMPS program, students will have access to the state-of-the-art equipment and training that will best position them to succeed in our rapidly changing workforce.”

“The RAMPS program not only will help fulfill today’s workforce needs of our commonwealth, it also will enhance the University of Louisville’s work in advanced research and education in robotics and additive manufacturing,” said UofL Interim President Lori Stewart Gonzalez. “We are extremely grateful to Congressman Yarmuth for his support in helping us obtain this funding.”

Using existing and new equipment and leveraging the knowledge and skills present in the UofL facilities, RAMPS leaders will introduce K-12 students, high school graduates and university students to robotics and additive manufacturing and help train them to use these advanced technologies in the workplace.

“The goal of this program is to help future technicians and engineers prepare for employment in additive manufacturing fields that are both high-paying and growing in need. Whether it is a mid-career person looking to transition professions, a currently enrolled college student or someone with no post-high school education, we will be delivering workforce training tailored to an individual’s starting education and skills level,” said Thomas Berfield, co-director of AMIST.

Berfield anticipates that AMIST will add equipment used in the aerospace, automotive, dental and biomedical industries, among others.

Workers at Kentucky’s multiple manufacturing facilities are expected to be disproportionately affected by the shift toward automation, making programs like RAMPS essential to advance employment opportunities in the commonwealth.

“While it is true that automation is expected to displace workers in manufacturing, the adoption of robot technology actually predicts wage growth as those positions are replaced with higher skilled workers in high-tech positions needed to interface with the robots,” Popa said.

RAMPS leaders expect around 200 students will be exposed to these technologies in the first year as part of pilot projects, followed by more robust and formalized workforce training programs and curricula to be developed in future years.

In addition to training workers, RAMPS will elevate UofL’s programs at LARRI, AMIST and MNTC by further improving the high-quality learning environment within these centers, attracting highly qualified faculty and talented students and increasing opportunities for additional funding.

Since the opening of LARRI’s dedicated robotics lab on the UofL campus in October, it has hosted more than 400 K-12 and college students, industry professionals and researchers to learn about existing and potential uses of robots, drones and other technology.

“The research we do here at UofL has real impact in engineering a future technology-driven economy in Kentucky and beyond,” said Kevin Gardner, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation. “We are grateful to Congressman Yarmuth for securing this funding to expand that impact and support our work to build the next generation of robotics technologies and professionals.”

A team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) traveled from California on September 20 to collaborate with robotics researchers at the (LARRI) facility. NASA’s JPL is a federally-funded research and development center that works on developing new technology for robots that could be useful for future space exploration.

The 40-person JPL team, dubbed “CoStar” made the trip to University of Louisville to compete for a $2 million prize in the third and final round of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. This international robotics competition was held September 21-23 at Louisville Mega Caverns beneath the Louisville Zoo.

“Being out here at UofL Speed School and specifically working with LARRI is a fantastic way for us to be preparing and ensuring our robots and associated software are ready for competition,”��said Benjamin Morrell, robotics engineer at JPL and deputy team lead of CoStar. “It’s an incredible facility.”

LARRI Director Dan Popa said the event is a great opportunity to showcase Speed School and the robotics program at the brand-new, cutting-edge facility.

“It is a really good spot to support this kind of competition because it has easy in and out access, and the facility itself was built in such a way to quickly deploy robots and test them,” Popa said. “We are pleased to see it being used to maximum capacity.”

In the DARPA SubT Challenge, CoStar, (which is a collaboration of JPL, CalTech, MIT, Kaist (University in Korea) and LTU (University in Sweden), competed against seven other teams of autonomous robots exploring unknown environments including cave, urban and mine elements and will demonstrate how their autonomy, networking, perception and mobility capabilities perform on physical courses underground.

Morrell explained that the system is designed for robots to go in quickly, map what a disaster area looks like and report back to a human rescue crew so they can pinpoint where survivors are and avoid areas that are dangerous.

“For a NASA application, we are looking at cave exploration on the moon and Mars, using this same kind of technology to gather scientific information,” said Morrell.

With a new research facility soon to open, Popa said the university is currently recruiting faculty from this same elite robotics community from around the country and the world.

“This helps visibility, and for people to know about what we’re doing here,” he said.

Speed School students also reap the benefits.

“It’s a great opportunity for them to be exposed to this,” said Popa. “The challenges that DARPA has put together have very difficult feats, and these teams are the cream of the crop in research around the world.”

With each new challenge, DARPA has played a role in moving robotics forward, according to Popa.

“Every five years DARPA has issued a new challenge and they have included autonomous driving, humanoid robots and now this subterranean challenge,” he said. “All these challenges are pushing development not just at universities but at companies, and eventually they come into the commercial sector.”

Check out video from the visit below.��

The program provides training and $50,000 in funding that helps university researchers translate the ideas they develop in the lab into new, technology-backed startups. Participating teams complete an intense, two-month bootcamp learning about commercialization, engaging with industry and talking to potential customers.

Two projects from UofL were chosen to participate in recent bootcamp cohorts:

• BioCaRGOS, short for Capture and Release Gels for Optimized Storage (bioCaRGOS), uses a novel water-based stabilizer to enable storage of sensitive biospecimens like RNA, DNA or proteins at low temperatures for long periods of time, including during transport to remote locations. The project team includes: co-inventors Gautam Gupta and��Rajat Chauhan, both in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, and business mentor Jeff Cummins, who also is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the UofL Office of Research and Innovation.

• ARNA, short for , an artificially intelligent health care robot created to provide round-the-clock patient monitoring and allow nurses to focus more on direct patient care by taking on some of their time-consuming tasks. The project team includes: co-inventors Dan Popa and Sumit Kumar Das, of engineering, and business mentor Mary Tapolsky, of the UofL Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship.

Chauhan, of the BioCaRGOS team, said the experience helped his team find an industry commercialization partner. They currently are seeking partners for an upcoming application NSF Partnerships for Innovation program, which allows NSF-backed projects like his to work with industry on research and development and accelerate the technology’s path to market.

“Vaccine stability (especially for COVID-19) remains a critical challenge and is the critical bottleneck for effective distribution of the state-of-art MRNA based vaccines to current population,” said Chauhan, BioCaRGOS entrepreneurial lead and a postdoctoral research scientist. “Our technology has the potential to advance the delivery of vaccines at room temperature, a feat that cannot be achieved currently.”

Teams must be nominated for the national I-Corps bootcamp, and must first complete a regional . Both the BioCARGOS and ARNA teams completed UofL’s I-Corps site program — part of UofL’s suite of��, that also includes the UofL , NIH and NSF programs. I-Corps at UofL requires successful participation and completion of , UofL’s own 10-week entrepreneurial bootcamp.

“These programs support commercialization of the work being done by our researchers here at UofL,” said Jessica Sharon, UofL’s director of innovation programs. “We’re proud of the ARNA and BioCARGOS teams, and their work to accelerate product development of their innovations to address unmet needs in the market.”��

The idea is to use an artificially intelligent robot they call ARNA — — to perform some tasks and cleaning in areas where it might be dangerous to send human hospital staff.��

The bot has been outfitted with an ultraviolet disinfecting light and sprayable sanitizing agent so it can clean commonly touched surfaces where the virus might live, such as handles, tables and elevator buttons.

“In times like this, where we are battling a highly contagious virus, our health care professionals are at the forefront and are exposed to it,” said Sumit Kumar Das, the J.B. Speed School of Engineering research scientist leading the project. “We hope that our technology will help contribute towards providing solutions to the challenges that our community is facing right now.”

was originally invented to help with round-the-clock patient monitoring and allow nurses to focus more on direct patient care by taking on some of their time-consuming tasks. Now, the research team, part of the Louisville Automation and Robotics Research Institute, or LARRI, hopes ARNA can help hospital workers during pandemic.

They have tested the bot in the Shumaker Research Building on UofL’s Belknap campus, and hope soon to test it in a hospital setting. UofL biology researchers are working on developing the sanitizing method and will test surfaces for virality in the Shumaker trial.

ARNA is not intended to replace human cleaning and disinfecting staff, “but this robot could help keep people from getting sick,” said Dan Popa, who leads LARRI. “Because it is designed to clean areas that pose hazards to human health, it can help employers protect workers from potential exposure to those areas.”

He adds that his team has been working non-stop to modify the bot: “This is work that is definitely something that will continue because the need for it is crucial.”��

UofL is providing financial support for COVID-19 research, but additional funds are needed to continue the work over time. Donations specifically for the research can be made online here.��

“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.

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 and�� about UofL research on robots and children with autism.

Popa acknowledges the importance of ARNA to overworked nurses.

“I can tell you that nurses are very excited to have this kind of an aide,” said Popa. “Nurses right now are overworked and what happens is patients miss care.”

ARNA does present challenges, however, such as cost and trust in artificially intelligent machines.

“We’re not going to see a replacement of nurses in human care, but you are going to see enhancement of such care with the help of these robots,” said Popa.

The robot technology is patent-pending through the .��

Learn more about ARNA:

“The vision is in the near future we will be using so-called wafer scale microfactories,” said Dan Popa, UofL’s robotics team leader and a professor in the Speed School of Engineering. “On this wafer, there will be a ton of microbots similar to a factory. Instead of producing cars, they’ll be producing nanotechnology products.”��

Each of the microchips holds several microbots and Popa believes they can be used for several purposes, especially in health care. Check out the full story: