Below is an archive of the teams selected for each cycle of the SURPASS Initiative. Select a range of years to view the selected teams for that 18-month award period, and click on a project’s name to expand its details.
Some projects have been selected to receive follow-on funding after their initial award period, and therefore may appear in more than one cycle.
WSE PI: Amy Foster, Ph.D.
APL PI: Nicholas G. Povlopoulos Ph.D.
The CEREBRO team is at the forefront of a technological revolution that aims to transform the landscape of neuroimaging and human-computer interaction. By pioneering a cutting-edge, portable, and non-invasive brain imaging technology, CEREBRO’s mission encompasses the early detection and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Dementia, deciphering the complexities of autism spectrum disorder, advancing prosthetic control through thought alone, and more. The team’s innovative approach also extends to real time cognitive performance monitoring, and opens the door to science fiction concepts such as remote operation of robots on extraterrestrial landscapes – expanding human capabilities and exploration to new frontiers. While these concepts may seem out of reach – they are, in fact, within the realm of known possibility, barring one limitation. To date, there is no fully non- invasive method for monitoring brain activity with the combination of wearability, portability, sensitivity, and spatio-temporal resolution needed for decoding the subtle cognitive information transmitted by neurons firing in the cerebral mantle during normal everyday human activities. The CEREBRO team seeks to address this critical technological and market need for cost effective, wearable/portable, and non- invasive neuroimaging, unlocking the power of the brain to enable the next step of human evolution. Through support from the SURPASS program at the Johns Hopkins University, the CEREBRO team is not just envisioning a future where the mysteries of the brain are unlocked, but is actively working to make this future a reality, promising a profound impact on medicine, technology, and our understanding of the human condition.
WSE PI: Emad Boctor, Ph.D.
APL PI: Seth Billings, Ph.D
Approximately 3 million Americans today suffer from debilitating degenerative retinal disorders of the photoreceptors, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP), with no hope of restored visual function. This figure is projected to double by the year 2050. Our objective is to change this reality and provide a viable treatment option for individuals suffering from blindness and severe vision loss due to incurable disorders of the outer retina. By harnessing the power of photoacoustics to synthetically stimulate residual inner layers of the diseased retina, our patented photoacoustic retinal stimulation (PARS) approach represents a new paradigm for prosthetic vision to safely restore form vision and overcome challenges where prior technology has failed. This approach follows a multi-step energy conversion pathway whereby light from a highly focused nanosecond pulsed laser irradiates an energy absorbing implant material thereby generating thermoelastic expansion within the material and producing a localized source of ultrasound. These ultrasound waveforms then stimulate activity within the residual neurons of the inner retina that produce vision. Having completed an initial phase of research under the SURPASS program, our research team has developed a prototype test device and completed proof-of-concept experiments demonstrating the ability of optoacoustics to successfully stimulate action potentials in retinal ganglion cells. Our continuing work focuses on maturing our technology to improve performance in key areas for restoring functional form vision and to provide broad applicability across the full domain of retinal disorders that could potentially be treated using this approach. Our continuing work also focuses on expanding our biological studies to further characterize the efficacy and safety of our techniques while optimizing our approach through experiments with retinal explants and live animal models. By leveraging this foundational research, our team aims to spur external investment in a new research program that will ultimately change the hope and reality of many who suffer from the debilitating impacts of incurable blindness.
WSE PI: Corey Oses, Ph.D.
APL PI: Avi Bregman, Ph.D
Hydrogen (H2) is the premier zero-emissions energy carrier of the post-fossil-fuel era, not only capable of powering our increasingly electrified technology, but also providing sustenance for the rising population. However, its clean generation stands as one of the major obstacles to an H2– powered future. Through unique chemistry and innovative chemical engineering, ADD-H2 offers a pathway to making it accessible from two of the most abundant resources on Earth, water and heat. Despite the hundreds of solutions that have been explored, thermochemical water splitting has yet to be commercialized because of the excess temperatures required to provide appreciable H2 yield. The ADD-H2 team looks to design a new type of reactor employing the principles of high entropy materials.
WSE PI: Thomas Hartung, Ph.D., M.D.
APL PI: Erik Johnson, Ph.D
Integrating our understanding of biological and artificial intelligence is a grand challenge requiring deeper insights into the foundations of natural and engineered cognition. To address this grand challenge, we pioneer organoid intelligence (OI) – interfacing and analyzing in vitro models of the brain (Brain Organoids) to gain insights into emergence of intelligence in biological neural networks. Our interdisciplinary team, led by PIs Thomas Hartung (The Johns Hopkins University Department of Environmental Health and Engineering) and Erik Johnson (The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics lab), specializes in deriving, maturing, and interfacing human brain organoids and applying insights by fusing cultures with AI and robotics.
In Year 1, we demonstrated the ability to conduct foundational open and closed-loop sensing/control experiments with brain organoids. In Year 2, we will focus on neuromodulation of learning and embodiment, as well as formalizing protocols to ensure ethical oversight. Through biologically grounded research, we believe OI holds promise for transformational advances in understanding lifelike intelligence to benefit society.
Our central goal is demonstrating the promise of OI systems for adaptive, lifelong learning. By engineering, analyzing, and applying brain organoids to problems in AI/robotics, this project aims to uncover the complex dynamics underlying biological intelligence. Success could enable breakthroughs from disease models to efficient biocomputing through hybrid approaches. We also address ethical challenges introduced by these brain-based platforms.
Back Row, Left to Right: David Van Wie, Ph.D. (APL); Michael Brupbacher, Ph.D. (APL), Joseph Katz, Ph.D. (WSE), Tamer Zaki, Ph.D. (WSE) Front Row, Left to Right: Melissa Terlaje, Ph.D. (APL), Kevin Hemker, Ph.D. (WSE), Morgan Trexler, Ph.D. (APL)
WSE PI: Kevin Hemker, Ph.D.
APL PI: Melissa Terlaje, Ph.D
The team behind BEAST envisions a future where sustained flight in the upper stratosphere is not only possible but also commonplace. While only rockets and missiles are currently able to reach this altitude, air-breathing flight vehicles could be the answer to this level of transportation, enabling the shuttling of people and goods to and from space, providing new modes of surveillance, and paving the way for military missions and capabilities.
To achieve this lofty goal, a team of researchers and experts from WSE’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and APL’s Air and Missile Defense Sector (AMDS) and Research and Exploratory Development Department (REDD) theorizes that it will need to create radical advances to existing technology and capabilities to enable these types of flights, including enhancing the vehicle’s lift and control, creating high-impulse combustion, and applying advanced thermal management of the flight vehicle.
The team detailed a three-pronged approach focused on: (1) vehicle lift and maneuverability, which will require state-of-the-art modeling of hypersonic flow and turbulence; (2) enhanced thrust, via the development of activated microporous liquid fuels; and (3) thermal transport and morphing.
Left to Right: Francesco Tenore, Ph.D. (APL); Emad Boctor, Ph.D. (WSE); Peter Gehlbach, M.D., Ph.D. (SOM); Seth Billings, Ph.D. (APL); James Spicer, Ph.D. (WSE); Breanne Christie, Ph.D. (APL); Jeeun Kang, Ph.D. (WSE) Not Pictured: Raymond Koehler, Ph.D. (SOM); Martin Pomper, M.D., Ph.D. (SOM); David Shrekenhamer, Ph.D. (APL); Russell Taylor, Ph.D. (WSE)
WSE PI: Emad Boctor, Ph.D.
APL PI: Seth Billings, Ph.D
Millions worldwide experience some form of visual impairment or blindness. Leading causes of blindness include glaucoma, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy. While surgery is an option for patients with cataracts and preserved retinal function, those impacted by irreversible blindness have little hope.
Although artificial retinas and visual prosthetic technologies have evolved over the last decade, current approaches rely on invasive electrode arrays for retinal stimulation and provide limited resolution and temporary benefits that degrade over time.
PIs Emad Boctor, associate research professor at the Whiting School of Engineering’s Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, and Seth Billings, a project manager in APL’s Research and Exploratory Development Department, working with a team comprised of WSE and APL researchers—including WSE’s James Spicer and Russell Taylor; SOM’s Peter Gehlbach, Martin Pomper, and Raymond Koehler; and APL’s Francesco Tenore, Breanne Christie and David Shrekenhamer—are developing an innovative photoacoustic retinal stimulation (PARS) approach with the potential to help a subset of patients with severe vision loss and degenerative disorders of the outer retina.
As part of their SURPASS proposal, the team detailed a less-invasive wearable technology that would stimulate retinal tissue and restore functional vision. The capability, known as PARS, would involve specially made eyewear with an integrated camera and photoacoustic (PA) laser scanner that can process a live-camera image to initiate a visual simulation pattern. The PA laser scanner then quickly pulses this pattern onto a PA-sensitive implant layer that has been situated in the back of the eye.
To date, “vision restoration devices have required implanting an invasive, active stimulation device into the retina. This approach creates major limitations,” says Boctor. While PARS still requires a passive implant, it lies on the retinal surface without penetration. “A further improvement has been the relocation of the entire stimulation device and its power source outside of the eye. This repositioning allows upgradability, and adaptation of the device during disease progression, as well as high-resolution excitation,” Boctor says.
Boctor tapped Billings, whose research at APL focuses on AI and computer vision with applications in autonomy, robotics, rehabilitative technology, and interventional and diagnostic medicine, to bring this concept to life.
Billings hopes to validate this novel approach with further studies supported by SURPASS funding.
Back Row, Left to Right: Jacob Khurgin, Ph.D. (WSE); Mark Foster, Ph.D. (WSE); Spencer Langevin (APL); Jeremiah Wathen, Ph.D. (APL); Griffin Milsap, Ph.D. (APL) Front Row, Left to Right: Amy Foster, Ph.D. (WSE); Nicholas G. Pavlopoulos, Ph.D. (APL); Konstantinos Gerasopoulos, Ph.D. (APL) Not Pictured: Elisabeth Marsh, M.D., Ph.D. (SOM)
WSE PI: Amy Foster, Ph.D.
APL PI: Nicholas G. Povlopoulos Ph.D.
According to the World Health Organization, one in six people suffers from a neurological disorder. Despite this fact, there is still no way to routinely monitor brain health efficiently and cost-effectively with limited invasiveness. CEREBRO seeks to change that.
Surveying the clinical landscape, the team learned that there is currently no wearable and portable device that is able to easily decode subtle cognitive information across the whole brain during natural everyday activities. Even the most current high-tech and least-invasive brain imaging technology is too cost-prohibitive to allow for mainstream usage.
One of the CEREBRO team’s goals is to make non-invasive brain scans readily available so that they may become as common as routine checkups. The team envisions a future where a data pool of brain-health metrics from millions of brains may help doctors and scientists unlock the mysteries of neurological disorders (such as Alzheimer’s disease) years before onset, and enable non-invasive applications from human performance monitoring to brain computer interfacing. The technology would be in the form of a wearable, portable device for neuroimaging not yet possible because of a “missing link in the technology chain”—a new sensor that can measure a brain’s continually broadcasting magnetic fields in an unprecedented, highly sensitive manner. The sensor works by translating brain signals to the optical domain where extremely small signals can be measured with high precision.
Left to Right: Thomas Hartung, Ph.D., M.D. (WSE); Erik Johnson, Ph.D. (APL) Not Pictured: Lomax Boyd, Ph.D. (BSPH); Brian Caffo, Ph.D. (BSPH); David Gracias, Ph.D. (WSE); Erin Hahn, J.D. (APL); Tim Harris, Ph.D. (WSE); Jeffrey Kahn, Ph.D. (BSPH); Bart Paulhamus, D.Eng. (APL); Lena Smirnova, Ph.D. (WSE/BSPH); Francesco Tenore, Ph.D. (APL); Brock Wester, Ph.D. (APL)
WSE PI: Thomas Hartung, Ph.D., M.D.
APL PI: Erik Johnson, Ph.D
AI is quickly permeating society in many ways, from our shopping experiences to the information and news we receive on the internet. However, artificially replicating the function and efficiency of the human brain remains elusive. The essential question for this team is: Can you manufacture intelligence and maintain long-term learning in an artificial brain?
“Despite emerging machine learning models to process images, videos, and text with high performance, progress is requiring exponentially increasing resources without a clear path to human-like intelligence,” said PI Thomas Hartung of WSE and BSPH. “This SURPASS proposal is focused on unlocking the power of biological computing as a potential capability to leap-frog the current state of AI.”
To do so, the team wants to utilize organoid intelligence (OI). Grown in a petri dish under controllable conditions, an organoid is a tiny tissue culture derived from stem cells that can be trained and observed through microelectrode interfaces. By studying an organoid’s behavior, the team can learn about changes in biological neural networks, which provides insight into the synaptic learning that is critical to understanding biological intelligence.
Because this is an emerging field, the team anticipates addressing ethical challenges tied to human stem cell bioengineering. There are also technology gaps to consider. Breakthroughs in neural interface are needed to determine whether input and output signals can be properly delivered to and from an organoid. Current AI technologies that are needed to understand and model brain organoids are also lacking.
Hartung and his group in JHU’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering have developed a 3D brain-organoid model derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. The model incorporates brain immune cells, known as microglia, which are necessary for neural development and learning. The team aims to grow these brain organoids in phases, increasing biological mass to the ultimate goal of 1 billion neural cells. APL’s PI, Erik Johnson, said he hopes to have working prototypes within 18 months, but acknowledged that longer-term applications of OI for biological sensing and computing may still be many years away.
