Commercial Appeal - University of Memphis lands $10.8 million grant to be center of mobile health big data

The University of Memphis on Thursday vaulted into a class of the nation’s top-tier universities seeking to harness the power of “big data” in biomedical research by landing a $10.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

A computer scientist at the Memphis university, Santosh Kumar, will lead one of a dozen new collaborative “centers of excellence” established by an NIH initiative called Big Data to Knowledge, or BD2K.

The four-year award is the single largest research grant ever landed by the U of M, officials said. It promises to put the university and Memphis on the map for researchers, entrepreneurs and corporations like Apple and Samsung in the field of mobile devices and wearable sensors used to collect growing oceans of data.

“It is, I think with little debate, the single most significant research accomplishment we’ve had in the history of the university — and that’s 102 years,” U of M President David Rudd said in an interview.

Kumar will lead a team of “superstar” scientists from various disciplines at top-tier colleges forming the Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge, or MD2K as U of M calls it.

That center is one of a dozen being established by the NIH, the nation’s main federal agency supporting medical research to the tune of $30 billion a year, to develop analytical software tools, policies and training to harness growing oceans of “big data” transforming biomedical research.

Philip Bourne, NIH associate director for data science, said that the particular attraction for funding the center led by Kumar “was that we foresee that mobile health and data coming from it is undoubtedly a big data problem and is just going to escalate and grow very extensively over the four years of these awards.”

The NIH plans to invest about $656 million through 2020 in itsBD2K initiative, designed to have the dozen centers collaborate and share with the broader research community, with involvement of NIH scientists as well.

Memphis scientists and researchers win about $100 million per year in National Institutes of Health grants. While the money is used for medical discoveries, with St. Jude Children’s Research Center attracting about two-thirds of the money, few ideas have blossomed into businesses and tech jobs in the city.

Vanderbilt University, in contrast, received $311 million last year, while the University of California at Los Angeles took in $341 million from NIH and the University of Michigan $412 million.

U of M received more than $50 million in research funds from all sources last year, but only $3.6 million from NIH, a relatively small amount that traces to the university’s lack of medical research. Landing the big data award Thursday was hailed as a milestone by university officials.

Kumar has gained a national reputation for mobile health research, collaborating with scientists at other universities to develop devices such as sensors that can be worn and smartphones used to continuously collect real-world data about a person’s health, behaviors and environment. Popular Science magazine in 2010 included him among the nation’s 10 most brilliant scientists under age 38. He’s now reached 37.

Spearheading research to harness mobile device big data is expected to boost the university’s attractiveness for faculty and graduate students, as well as to attract corporations and entrepreneurs.

Kumar said he’s already been asked to give a talk at Samsung, a leading smartphone maker in South Korea, although his schedule wouldn’t allow that trip.

“What we’re hoping right now, just thinking as a scientist, we’re hoping that we can provide the engine that underlies the mobile health apps,” he said.

Rudd said the new center of excellence attracts new opportunities and partnerships, not only with other universities but with potential corporate partners, in terms of spinoff technology and technology transfer.

“Those are opportunities that are already emerging for the university and we’re going to pursue them in the coming months and the coming year,” he said.

Kevin Boggs, assistant vice president of technology transfer and interim executive director of the university’s FedEx Institute of Technology, said that MD2K technology in some cases will be brought to market “when large companies license and make significant investments required to develop new products based on our technology.”

“In other cases, entrepreneurs here and at our partner schools will see an opportunity, partner with master’s and PhD. graduates from the program and launch startups,” he said.

At the U of M, the FedEx Institute for Technology and Crews Center for Entrepreneurship “have great networks of local entrepreneurs and investors and other resources to support those entrepreneurs in Memphis who are interested in leveraging access to this great new global opportunity,” Boggs said.

The MD2K center is housed in the FedEx Institute with a core staff of five, Kumar said. About 50 people will be part of the center, including 22 scientists, students and postdoctoral researchers from universities ranging form Cornell Tech to Georgia Tech, Ohio State and UCLA.

Another U of M faculty member, J. Gayle Beck, the Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in the psychology department, will lead the center’s training to spread the software tools developed to the larger scientific community. Researchers will get the software at no cost.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, a U of M law school graduate, highlighted the list of universities the MD2K center will lead.

“Never have seen and didn’t think I’d ever see Memphis with this class of universities,” Cohen said at Thursday’s announcement ceremony, turning to Kumar to thank him.

At least once a year Memphis will host the scientists involved in the center.

The development of smart software that can be used by biomedical researchers, and eventually by health care providers and consumers, will be based on two studies producing data from mobile sensors, Kumar said.

One, at Ohio State’s medical school, will focus on congestive heart failure, the top cause of hospital readmissions. The other, at Northwestern’s medical school, will sift for triggers that cause smokers who have tried to quit but light up again; smoking is the highest cause of death, about 18 percent, in the country, Kumar said.

For congestive heart failure, for example, sensors and their data can track fluid in the lungs and may point to whether for that person consumed had too much salt or fluids, they physical activity patterns, places visited, conversations had, stress or dozens of other factors, Kumar said.

Early detection and ultimately prevent them, are goals of learning how to crunch mobile sensor big data, he said.

“We don’t have that capability today, but perhaps we can,” Kumar said.