The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded ECE Assistant Professor Adam Khalifa a prestigious New Innovator Award, securing research funding that could revolutionize invasive surgical implants and improve understanding for disease detection. Dr. Khalifa is one of only two University of Florida engineering professors to earn this honor this year—Xiao Fan, Ph.D., an assistant professor at UF’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, was also awarded a New Innovator Award.
Part of the High-Risk, High-Reward research program, the NIH awards support creative early-career investigators pursuing innovative, high-impact projects. This is the first time UF has won two New Innovator awards in one year, according to the NIH.
Khalifa was awarded a $1.5 million grant to research minimally invasive, wireless medical devices to manage and prevent a myriad of diseases. This five-year project strives to make medical procedures more precise and less invasive with wireless microdevices that can be injected rather than requiring surgical implantation.
“Our research doesn’t necessarily create new applications for these implants. Instead, we focus on making existing technologies less invasive, so more people might consider them for nervous system therapies”
“The ultimate goal is to develop devices that are battery-free, injectable microchips that can be deployed anywhere in the body.”
dr. adam Khalifa, director, Neural Interface Technology Lab
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