Advanced Optronics and Carnegie Mellon University Awarded $650,000 NSF Grant to Develop Bio-Inspired Medical Instruments

Pittsburgh, PA — Feb. 15, 2024 — Advanced Optronics Inc, a medical sensor technology startup, has been awarded a $650,000 National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator Phase I grant along with Carnegie Mellon University.

The convergence research will develop medical instruments that sense their own shape changes during complex surgeries and give surgeons real-time tactile feedback. The team’s bio-inspired approach synthesizes data from distributed sensors to give flexible medical instruments such as catheters, endoscopes, and electrodes senses of tactility and proprioception. The initial focus is cochlear implantation, to address hearing loss.

The effort will be co-led by Jay Reddy, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Advanced Optronics; Maysam Chamanzar, Ph.D., co-founder of Advanced Optronics and the Dr. William D. and Nancy W. Strecker Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University; Abraham Jacob, M.D., board-certified neurotologist and cochlear implant surgeon at the Center for Neurosciences; and Wenzhen Yuan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“A unique design feature of our approach is to combine microfabricated sensor arrays with machine learning, enabling us to recognize different surgical scenarios and complement the surgeon’s experience,” said Reddy.

The NSF Convergence Accelerator program supports use-inspired, team-based multidisciplinary research that translates solutions from the lab to real-world benefit. The Advanced Optronics team will compete with 15 other teams from around the country for $5 million follow-on Phase II grants to achieve clinical validation and commercialization within three years.

Advanced Optronics’ current work builds on promising preliminary results from UPMC Enterprises-funded research at Carnegie Mellon University, which the startup has since refined into working prototypes. The team’s micro-scale sensors collect this data without increasing the size or complexity of existing surgical devices or changing the surgeon’s workflow. The real-time tactile information adds to surgeons’ own sense of touch as they navigate and manipulate medical devices in delicate anatomy.

“Building on multi-modal microfabricated implantable devices developed in my lab in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, we aim to develop thin-film distributed sensor systems to revolutionize minimally-invasive surgical procedures by relaying enhanced tactile information to surgeons from the implant,” added Chamanzar. “I’m excited to work alongside this multidisciplinary team to drive this research towards clinical practice.”

Advanced Optronics was founded in 2021 to commercialize sensor technology developed by the co-founders in Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. Its micro-scale sensors are designed to give surgeons real-time AI guidance in delicate procedures, starting with cochlear implantation.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering covered the award the same day: “Developing Bio-Inspired Medical Instruments.”

For more information, email info@advancedoptronics.com.