Biomedical Engineering Faculty Awarded National Science Foundation Grant
The National Science Foundation awarded Anita Singh, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. This multi-year research grant of approximately $550,000 will expand on Singh's innovative research on the prevention of neonatal brachial plexus palsy (NPBB), a birth-related injury in newborns that can cause loss of movement or weakness of the arm.
The grant will offer dual benefits by not only advancing Singh's research, but supporting engineering students through participation in funded, translational research.
The CAREER grant will support our research to develop a tool to address and solve an ongoing clinical issue, as well as create firsthand learning opportunities for our students to work on funded research projects with very high clinical impact. — Anita Singh
Starting next semester, the funding will support Singh over the next five years as she leads a multi-collaborative team of undergraduate and graduate engineering students, as well as clinicians and engineers from Drexel University, Shriners Children's Hospital and Wayne State University.
The unique team of researchers will collect experimental data that will be used in computer-based models that serve as a tool used to develop strategies for prevention of birth-related injuries including NBBP.
This is the third federal grant awarded to Singh for her teaching and research since her arrival at Widener in 2014 and second awarded in relation to her work on NPBB prevention and treatment.
In 2017, she received a multi-year academic research enhancement award (AREA) grant for more than $415,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. That funding has allowed her to study biomechanical and physiological injury thresholds and the resulting structural changes of the neonatal brachial plexus.
The CAREER grant builds on Singh's NIH-funded research to investigate NBPP injury outcomes that occur specifically during hypoxia, a medical condition that is often caused by complicated deliveries that result in low oxygen in a newborn's tissues. Singh and her research team hypothesize that babies born under hypoxic conditions are more vulnerable to injury and therefore predisposed to NBPP.
