Wireless health research center opens in NYC
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The center, called NYU Wireless, will meld support and resources from National Instruments of Austin, Texas, with faculty and students from New York University (NYU) and NYU’s Langone School of Medicine in Manhattan and the Polytechnic Institute of NYU in Brooklyn.
The group’s plan, announced Aug. 8, is to move 25 engineering, computer science and medical professors into a newly constructed, 23,000-square-foot facility on the NYU-Poly campus this winter. The center will engage more than 100 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, bringing together faculty who have current research projects totaling close to $10 million per year, according to NYU.
With additional funding from the National Institutes of Health and other sources, the research center’s work will include increasing efficiency in radiofrequency spectrum for use in wireless communications and medical imaging. Also on the agenda: creating “smaller and smarter cellular networks and wireless devices that cooperate rather than compete for spectrum,” NYU said.
Daniel K. Sodickson, MD, PhD, director of medical imaging at NYU Langone Medical Center, said NYU Wireless will have the ability to validate its research on actual patients, adding that it will conduct research in radiology while also making “fundamental contributions” in such specialties as neuroengineering, cardiovascular engineering and electrophysiology.
The center named as its founding director Theodore Rappaport, PhD, a professor at all three NYU schools whose doctorate is in electrical engineering. He previously founded academic wireless centers at Virginia Tech and the University of Texas.
“The millimeter-wave spectrum is uncrowded, with enough capacity to accommodate breakthroughs in cellular and personal wireless communication networks,” said Rappaport in prepared remarks.
NYU Wireless also announced that its researchers have begun observing millimeter-length radio waves as they bounce off and travel through buildings in the Big Apple. “Operating at radio frequencies of 20 to 60 GHz—ten times higher than today’s cell phones and Wi-Fi networks—they offer higher data rates at lower cost, but the propagation of the signals in urban environments poses difficult technological challenges,” said NYU.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.