UNM team receives $600,000 DoD grant designed to strengthen basic research infrastructure
April 3, 2024 - Mary Beth King
A collaborative project at The University of New Mexico will receive part of $17.6 million in grants the Department of Defense is awarding to 27 academic teams under the Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR). DEPSCoR is a capacity-building program designed to strengthen the basic research infrastructure at institutions of higher education in underutilized states and territories.
The Primary Investigator for the UNM team, which will receive $600,000, is Mubarak Hussain Syed, assistant professor of Biology at UNM and head of the Syed Neural Diversity Lab. His mentor and collaborator on the project is Francesco Sorrentino, a professor in the UNM Department of Mechanical Engineering, who specializes in Control Theory and Machine Learning.
The UNM team’s project is titled Building Intelligent Systems Using Fruit Fly Navigational Neural Networks.
“We will use these funds for our collaborative studies that aim to build insect-inspired neuromorphic computing and intelligent machines using information from the fruit fly central complex circuits,” Syed explained. “With all the neurons mapped and genetic tools available, the fruit fly provides an excellent model system to advance basic research relevant to the mission of many funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense.”
This grant will also provide resources to train students at the interface of biology and engineering.
See whole story at UNM Newsroom
