ECE Alumna Rose Faghih wins NIH MIRA

ECE Alumna Rose Faghih (’08) has been awarded the National Institutes of Health Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators. The award is accompanied by a five-year $1,825,840 grant for her project entitled “MESH: Multimodal Estimators for Sensing Health”.

Faghih is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and Director of the Computational Medicine Laboratory. Her research interests include wearable technologies, medical cyber-physical systems and control, estimation and system identification of biomedical and neural systems.

As PI of the MESH study, she aims to develop algorithms for portable biosensor devices worn by individuals to screen four key health indicators: inflammation, metabolism, fatigue and interoceptive awareness. The multidisciplinary project includes collaborators in general medicine, nursing, neurosurgery, neuroscience, rheumatology, neuroendocrinology, psychiatry and learning sciences. Bringing together these diverse backgrounds will provide insights on ways for healthcare providers to better monitor and diagnose patient health at early stages and provide more accessible healthcare for underserved populations.

Last year, Faghih was inducted into the A. James Clark School of Engineering Early Career Distinguished Alumni Class of 2022. In 2020, she received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. She was also listed by MIT Technology Review’s global list of 35 Innovators Under 35, and by IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine as a “Woman to Watch”. She is a Senior Member of IEEE.

The MIRA Award is sponsored by the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). It provides laboratory support and research for studies that fall within the mission of NIGMS. The main focus of the program is to provide investigators with greater stability and flexibility to further scientific breakthroughs.

Published October 3, 2023