Clarkson funded for research to make battlefield lifesaver

POTSDAM — Clarkson University is a joint recipient of two grants totaling $3 million to advance research into sensor technology, which professors say could be the next frontier of science.

Clarkson announced Tuesday that one of its professors will be a co-principal investigator on a $1.6 million joint grant project with the University of California-San Diego. Evgeny Katz, the college's Milton Kerker chaired professor, hopes to develop a "field hospital on a chip" that could save soldiers' lives on the battlefield.

Using biocomputing and enzymes, he is creating an automated sense-and-treat system that could continuously monitor the wearer's blood, sweat or tears for markers that signal common injuries such as trauma, shock, brain injury or fatigue.

"For example, if the soldier has a small oxygen concentration and high adrenaline, we'll know they're under stress and probably very wounded," he said.

The ultimate goal is for the biological sensor to detect an illness and then administer the proper medication immediately, helping to speed recovery before a soldier even reaches a field hospital, Mr. Katz said.

"It means the soldier will get immediate medical treatment in the few minutes after they are wounded, even before they are evacuated to hospital. It could save his life maybe for these critical minutes," Mr. Katz said.

UC San Diego Professor Joseph Wang is also a co-principal investigator for the project. At Clarkson, the funding will back two postdoctoral researchers and one graduate student to help with the study, as well as the cost of expensive biochemicals.

Thanks to a $1.4 million National Science Foundation grant announced last week, Clarkson also will soon expand a high school science, technology, engineering and math curriculum that it created along with the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries.

The two institutions hope to teach 9,000 students to build, test and deploy sensors to monitor water quality in the Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers.

"Sensors are also going to shift paradigms in how we investigate things. We're going to need a new work force — just like we needed computer and Internet people — to accommodate that," said James S. Bonner, director of Clarkson's Center for the Environment and research director for the Beacon Institute.

Through the Student Enabled Network of Sensors for the Environment using Innovative Technology program, high school science teachers from St. Lawrence, Jefferson, Franklin and Dutchess counties, as well as the city of Troy, will receive training. SENSE IT lessons will include both in-class and out-of-school programming.

"They say the 1980s was the decade of the personal computer, and the 1990s was the decade of the Internet. Now we're coming into the decade of the sensor," said Susan E. Powers, associate dean for research and graduate studies at Clarkson's Coulter School of Engineering. "The idea with sensors is that we can do this, provide a real-time understanding of what the water quality looks like in these great rivers, and better prepare students for the technologies they're going to be faced with in the near term."