NIH recognizes engineering professor's innovative research with m...( Cell phones have come a long way in ...),Health

Cell phones have come a long way in the last decade. Today, one can talk, text message, shoot photos and video, send and receive e-mail, and even access the Web. Now imagine a cell phone that can be used to monitor diseases like HIV or malaria and to test water quality after a major disaster like a hurricane or earthquake.

Aydogan Ozcan, assistant professor of electrical engineering at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been working to make this cell phoneturnedmobile medical lab a reality. The proliferation of such devices could alter the direction of health care in the developing world, as well as in industrialized nations, in the next several years.

The great promise of Ozcan's work has earned him several prestigious honors for young scientists, most recently the 2009 NIH Director's New Innovator Award. Given to young faculty by the National Institutes of Health, the award includes funding of $1.5 million over five years to support highly innovative research projects.

"It is an honor to receive such an award from the NIH," said Ozcan, who is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA. "This award will be invaluable in my efforts to create a revolutionary device that is capable of significantly improving health care in the long-run by increasing the throughput and speed of nano-imaging."

This NIH award program is specifically designed to support creative new investigators with highly innovative research ideas at an early stage in their career, when they may lack the preliminary data required for traditional grants. The review process emphasizes creativity, innovative research approaches and the potential of a given project to have a significant impact on an important biomedical or behavioral research problem.

Ozcan will use the NIH award to further his research, exploring new ways to image and sense nanoscale events using compact imaging architect
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