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UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications

UT Tyler Faculty Awarded Grant to Help Improve Region’s Healthcare

December 12, 2019

Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303

The University of Texas at Tyler announced today that Dr. Prabha Sundaravadivel, assistant professor of electrical engineering, has received a National Science Foundation grant to promote the advantages of smart healthcare.

Smart healthcare is technology that leads to better diagnostic tools, better treatment for patients, and devices that improve quality of life. The $500,000 three-year grant will also help encourage students develop an interest, or further an interest, in the healthcare professions.

“The focus of our research grant is to educate about and recruit more people toward healthcare education to create more awareness for smart healthcare technology,” said Sundaravadivel, principal investigator for the grant. “We are going to focus on training high school students who are interested in getting into in any profession related to healthcare as well as undergraduates, who want to pursue graduate research.”

One of her current smart healthcare research endeavors is wearable biosensor systems. The sensors are designed to aid in the prediction of life-threatening events in infants and individuals with mental illness, especially those who live in rural, underserved areas of East Texas. The system can provide valuable information remotely to clinicians for the effective management and treatment of these individuals.

Sundaravadivel is working on the NSF grant with Dr. Premananda Indic, UT Tyler assistant professor of electrical engineering, and Dr. Jimi Francis, UT Tyler assistant professor of health and kinesiology, as well as three faculty from the University of North Texas.

The grant seminars and free lectures will begin in January 2020. For more information, contact Sundaravadivel at psundaravadivel@uttyler.edu.

A member of the prestigious UT System, The University of Texas at Tyler focuses on student success and innovative research in the more than 80 undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered to nearly 10,000 students. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News and World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.