UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State has been named as a sub-awardee on four teams selected for funding by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Three of the projects are funded through the ARPA-H Building Resilient Environments for Air and Total Health (BREATHE) program and aim to enhance indoor air quality, and one of the projects is funded through the ARPA-H Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT) program and aims to bioprint organs on demand. In total, more than $4 million of funding will support the work conducted at Penn State.
“The inclusion of Penn State engineering researchers on four ARPA-H projects is testament to the innovative and impactful research happening in the college,” said Eric Donnell, senior associate dean in the Penn State College of Engineering. “Through their contributions, our Penn State faculty will move the needle on public health and medical challenges by bringing their work out of the lab and into the world to solve real problems.”
The College of Engineering faculty are:
- Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of nuclear engineering, of chemistry, of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering
- Gregory Pavlak, Gifford H. Albright Career Development Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering who is also affiliated with the Institute of Energy and the Environment
- Bill Bahnfleth, professor of architectural engineering who is also affiliated with the Penn State Institute of Energy and the Environment
- Ibrahim Ozbolat, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in 3D Bioprinting and Regenerative Medicine and professor of engineering science and mechanics, of biomedical engineering and of neurosurgery
Details about each project can be found below.
ARPA-H BREATHE projects: SCALE, BRAVE and R-TRAC
The BREATHE program comprises three integrated innovation areas: a near-real-time biosensor capable of identifying multiple airborne biological agents; a tool that assesses indoor air quality exposure risk; and cost-effective smart building interventions to improve human health. The overall metric for success is significant — a 25% or greater respiratory illness reduction in testbed facilities with at least a 10% return on investment.
Strategic Control of bioAerosols in Learning Environments (SCALE)
Pan will serve as the Penn State lead on SCALE, a BREATHE project led by Poppy Health, Inc., to develop “an amplification-free genetic sensor that sends a tiny electrical signal when it recognizes a target microbe in the air, so buildings can respond accordingly,” according to the ARPA-H press release. The team will demonstrate the technology in 40 schools across the country. Penn State will receive $2.3 million over five years out of the total SCALE project funding of up to $39 million. Pan’s lab will lead the biosensor and assay development work in collaboration with the Wyss Institute at Harvard, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and other partners. The team will develop biosensors for detection of nucleic acids — molecules that store, transmit and express genetic information — for up to 25 biological agents found in the air.
Other Penn State collaborators, all of whom work in Pan’s lab, include Nandhakumar Ponnusamy, assistant research professor of nuclear engineering; Altan Alioglu, postdoctoral researcher; Ketan Dighe, graduate student in biomedical engineering; Shraddha Krishnakumar, graduate student in biomedical engineering; Oguzhan Colak, postdoctoral fellow; and Pranay Saha, postdoctoral researcher.
Respiratory Threat Real-Time Assessment and Control (R-TRAC) and Bioaerosol Risk Assessment interVention Engineering (BRAVE)
Pavlak and Bahnfleth are participants on two BREATHE project teams, one led by SafeTraces (R-TRAC) and focused on applications for medical centers, and one led by Virginia Tech (BRAVE) and focused on applications for daycare centers. Penn State will receive $1.122 million of the total of up to $39 million for the SafeTraces project and $360,000 of the up to $40 million for the Virginia Tech project.
On both projects, the researchers at Penn State are helping to develop and evaluate new HVAC system designs and control strategies to mitigate occupant harm from exposure to indoor pathogens and allergens. The control algorithms will be designed to respond to inputs from bioaerosol sensor technologies as well as community-level public data and building-focused sensors. The controls will be developed and evaluated using advanced modeling and simulation techniques, and the entire platform — biosensors, risk-models and interventions— is intended to be field tested during years four and five of the project, with SafeTraces field testing in U.S. Army Medical Centers and Virginia Tech field testing in daycares. Penn State researchers will be involved in the implementation of controls to reduce infection risk based on multiple considerations including effectiveness, cost and energy use impact.
ARPA-H PRINT project: VITAL
Vascularized Immunocompetent Tissue as an Alternative Liver (VITAL)
Ozbolat will serve as the Penn State lead on VITAL, an ARPA-H PRINT project led by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern). Penn State will receive $619,000 of the total up to $24.9 million over five years.
In this project, the Penn State team will use bioprinting technology to build vascularized liver tissue for the purpose of transplanting into large animals. The team will closely work with UT Southwestern and test alternative biofabrication techniques to create scalable liver tissues.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The VITAL project specifically is funded under Award Number D25AC000239-00, providing up to $24,939,120 for a 60-month period. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.