Sensors, Centered

The Institute for Connected Sensor-Systems (IConS) ties together NC State’s strengths in sensor development and application-driven solutions.

In 2021, Shevaun Neupert wrote a proposal for the National Institutes of Health on integrating off-the-shelf wearable devices, such as a smartwatch, into her research on detecting patterns of cognitive impairment.

When proposal reviewers suggested she look into using more innovative wearable devices for her research, she only had to look across NC State University’s campus.

Neupert, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology, was connected with the Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) Center and tapped into the wide range of research happening in the College of Engineering on sensor systems, including wearable devices.

She is now working with Edgar Lobaton, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), on a project to identify psychophysiology, attention and cognition patterns that can help determine the appropriate sensors for tracking progression of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Their project is funded by a seed grant from the Institute for Connected Sensor-Systems (IConS), a new university initiative under the Office of Research and Innovation with a mission to lead, integrate and deliver sensors, sensing and systems solutions for and by the research community at NC State. With interdisciplinary support and funding from all the NC State colleges, the institute’s goal is to link sensor developers and users by emphasizing an applications- and systems-driven approach.

“If you look across NC State, it’s like, OK, what’s the application area? And what do we need sensors developed for? And also, who needs to use them and who can create them?” said Michael Daniele, professor in ECE and the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. “So IConS is trying to take an approach where there’s sensor developers and sensor users participating in the work.”

Daniele is an executive co-director of IConS, along with Alper Bozkurt, McPherson Family Distinguished Professor in Engineering Entrepreneurship in ECE, and advisory co-director Veena Misra, head of the ECE department and M.C. Dean Distinguished University Professor.

The three IConS co-directors have all been involved with ASSIST, the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center founded at NC State in 2012. Misra and Bozkurt are the current co-directors, and Daniele is a key faculty member with the center. ASSIST’s model and its partnerships with industry and device users served as inspiration for IConS.

“We try to come up with that innovation, starting from the problem and then finding the solution, rather than having a solution and looking for a problem to solve it,” Bozkurt said. “This is, I think, the main spirit of IConS, that it is a conversation.”

That ongoing conversation has led to a long list of projects that could incorporate sensors.

So far, IConS has released three requests for proposals — including one in partnership with the NC Plant Sciences Initiative — and announced seven seed grant projects. College of Engineering researchers are working with faculty members and students in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Wilson College of Textiles. IConS is expanding to work with all of NC State’s academic units as more faculty members and students recognize the value of sensors and data collection.

“Sensors have been becoming increasingly vital as the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow,” Bozkurt said. “AI thrives on data, and sensors are critical sources of this information. However, many of these sensors have yet to be developed or deployed, presenting vast opportunities for innovation and exploration.”

Learn more at go.ncsu.edu/connectedsensors.

Project Spotlight

What sensors are best for detecting cognitive impairment?

Neupert and Lobaton’s project, titled “Tracking the Impact of Physically Active and Sedentary States on Cognition,” is working toward identifying the best types of sensors for early detection of MCI so that people can take action to reduce or prevent further decline.

The study involves multi-modal sensing of facial expressions, audio and physiological responses such as heart rate and blood pressure. Researchers want to identify which of these are most likely to be potential indicators of MCI.

Researchers are bringing in a control group and a group of people experiencing MCI to campus for two separate visits. During both visits, they will take two sets of cognitive tests while connected to sensing devices. On one visit, patients remain sedentary the entire time. During the other, they ride a stationary bike between tests, then walk on a treadmill after the second set of tests.

“It’ll be great if there’s one particular biomarker that gets accentuated more depending on what we’re looking for,” Lobaton explained. “It’ll take some exploratory data analysis to find out. It won’t be a conclusive answer either, but it will be a first step.”

Neupert hopes that one day, their research can go beyond the lab and that sensor systems will collect real-life data to achieve real-time data analytics.

“I would like people to do real things in their real environments and see if we can get strong, robust, impactful findings that will improve people’s lives,” she said. “And that would be a future step of work like this, to have people go home with these sensors and be wearing them in their day-to-day lives.”

Project Spotlight

What does polarized light tell us about a plant?

Polarized light may enlighten researchers on how stress impacts a plant’s ability to use starch, generated by the plant through photosynthesis, which could help them better understand a plant’s energy dynamics and predict yield.

With support from IConS and the NC Plant Sciences Initiative, researchers at NC State are using sensors to gather data on what polarization — which can detect structural and chemical changes, as well as the orientation of molecules over time — can indicate about a plant.

“I think there is a lot of opportunity there that hasn’t been exploited with polarized light,” said Michael Kudenov, professor in ECE. “And I think it’s primarily because the expertise isn’t there. People don’t really know why it can be useful. So I think that’s the exciting part of the project. It’s a very understudied space, and then we have the expertise, the tools and the positioning to do it.”

The team is working on the development of organic photo electronics to optimize the sensor’s flexibility and breathability to create as little disturbance to the plant as possible. Their long-term goal is to create a micro ellipsometer, which measures changes in polarization in reflected light .

This project, titled “Intrinsic Polarization Transceivers for On-Plant Polarimetric Sensing,” is led by Kudenov; Brendan O’Connor, professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; and Anna Locke, a USDA-Agricultural Research Service scientist and adjunct professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences.

By encouraging faculty members to form interdisciplinary teams, IConS helps keep momentum going and build camaraderie for projects that haven’t yet received higher-level funding, such as from the National Science Foundation.