Monthly Archives: June 2017

Dr. Sridevi Sarma, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has been selected as the recipient of the 2015 Robert B. Pond, Sr. Excellence in Teaching Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching. The award recognizes “commitment to and excellence in instruction in the Whiting School of Engineering, success in instilling the desire to learn, and dedication to undergraduate students.” In testimonials supporting Sri’s nomination, students repeatedly described Sri as enthusiastic, approachable, and highly knowledgeable. They lauded her for her ability to elucidate complex topics, such as the Controls section of Systems and Controls, a course she co-teaches with fellow ICM core faculty members Michael Miller and René Vidal.

The award was presented to Sri at the annual Whiting School of Engineering Convocation Awards Ceremony on Monday, May 4.

Congratulations, Sri, on this well-deserved achievement!

The North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS) awarded Dr. Sridevi Sarma, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and ICM core faculty member the first Krishna Kumar Award at their Dec 12, 2014 annual meeting held in Las Vegas. Dr. Sarma set the bar high for subsequent recipients by addressing the 2000 or so attendees with a talk that managed to make complicated modeling approachable and significant for everyone in the audience. The North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS) is dedicated to promoting multidisciplinary collaboration among clinicians, scientists, engineers, and others to advance neuromodulation through education, research, innovation and advocacy.

Congratulations Sri!

Robert Yaffe, a predoctoral student and member of the Sarma lab, has been awarded a Pre-Doctoral Research Training Fellowship by the Epilepsy Foundation. The Fellowship supports predoctoral students with dissertation research related to epilepsy, thus strengthening their interest in establishing epilepsy research as a career direction. The title for Robert’s proposed project is “Development of a Tool for Seizure Foci Localization”.

For patients with epilepsy that do not respond to pharmaceutical treatments, the last resort treatment option is a surgical procedure in which the epileptogenic zone (EZ) – the region of the brain that is believed to be the source of the seizures – is removed. First, electrodes are implanted onto the surface of the brain or inserted deep into the brain. This is done to record the electrical activity of the brain while a patient has seizures, so that the exact source of the seizures can be determined. Once the EZ is determined, this area can be surgically resected. Only about 50% of the patients who have this procedure remain seizure-free in the long term. One of the main reasons why this procedure fails is misidentification of the EZ. Currently, trained epileptologists visually inspect hours of electrical recordings without the assistance of any computational tools. In this project, a computational tool will be developed to accurately identify the region of the brain that is responsible for generating seizures in patients with epilepsy. This will greatly improve the effectiveness of surgical resections and decrease the amount of time needed for the pre-surgical evaluation.

Congratulations Robert, and good luck with your research!

Dr. Sridevi Sarma, presented at the 2013 SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Conference on Applied Dynamical Systems. The conference was held at the Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort, Snowbird, Utah, USA, from May 19-23. Dr. Sarma’s presentation was entitled “On the Therapeutic Mechanisms of Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson’s Disease: Annihilation or Restoration?”

From SIAM’s site: “The application of dynamical systems theory to areas outside of mathematics continues to be a vibrant, exciting and fruitful endeavor. These application areas are diverse and multidisciplinary, ranging over all areas of applied science and engineering, including biology, chemistry, physics, finance, and industrial applied mathematics. This conference strives to achieve a blend of application-oriented material and the mathematics that informs and supports it. The goals of the meeting are a cross-fertilization of ideas from different application areas, and increased communication between the mathematicians who develop dynamical systems techniques and applied scientists who use them.”

To view a video of the presentation, click here.

To view pdf slides, click here.

Matthew Kerr, a Graduate Student in the lab of Dr. Sridevi Sarma, Assistant Professor at the Institute for Computational Medicine, has been awarded the Johns Hopkins University’s 2012-2013 ARCS Foundation Scholarship. The graduate award of $15,000 may be used for education-related expenses such as tuition, books, supplies, travel to conferences, research activities as well as other needs. Matthew’s current research focuses on how the human motor system influences limb control. The military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the insurgents’ use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), have led to a dramatic increase in the number of otherwise healthy, adaptable individuals missing limbs. Prosthetic limbs that could respond to an individuals thoughts as naturally as their own body would greatly increase their quality of life. The ARCS funding will support him as he investigates how the motor system responds to unexpected perturbations in movement. By understanding and modeling how different parts of the brain influence upper-limb motor control, new insights will be gained that may greatly improve the next generation of brain-controled prosthetics.

Congratulations on your scholarship Matthew, and good luck with your research!