Engineering

Overall: Dysphagia (swallowing disorders) causes 150,000 annual hospitalizations, increases pneumonia incidence, and adds 220,000 additional days to hospital admissions each year. Dysphagia risk is currently assessed via screening, and a failed screen then leads to the diagnostic gold-standard, the videofluoroscopic (VF) test. However, many patients who aspirate pass initial screens because they aspirate silently.

The Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh (UPitt) is seeking continued support for a predoctoral training program (8 positions/year) aimed at educating talented students from engineering and other quantitative sciences for careers in biomedical research in the cardiovascular area. UPitt has been at the forefront of education and research in this field, with two key components contributing to this status.

Slip and fall accidents are a major and growing source of occupational injuries. Slip-resistant shoes with a high coefficient of friction (COF) are effective at a reducing slipping risk. However, neither experts nor industry has agreed upon a consistent set of criteria for labeling a shoe as slip-resistant. A consequence of this lack of standardization is that significant variability exists across shoes that are labeled slip-resistant. Furthermore, independent testing of shoe COF is expensive, which may limit its use by employers and employees.