About

Collaborators
This RERC brings together the rehabilitation engineering research programs from New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, and the clinical expertise of the Children’s Specialized Hospital.
New Jersey Institute of Technology, Biomedical Engineering Department, Newark, NJ
Children's Specialized Hospital, Mountainside, NJ
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
JFK Medical Center, Edison, NJ
Passiac County Elks Cerebral Palsy Center, Clifton, NJ

Engineering Hope
New Technology for Rehabilitation

New Jersey Institute of Technology
The Alumni Magazine, Spring 2006

A team of biomedical engineers at NJIT is seeking to realize Maureen’s hopes. Biomedical engineering faculty Richard Foulds, Sergei Adamovich and Bruno Mantilla co-direct the university’s new Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, which is developing technologies to help children with orthopedic disabilities that result from cerebral palsy, brain injuries and other conditions. The center is funded by a $4.75 million grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Important material support has also been provided under the NJIT Strategic Plan and from other sources, such as the recent $100,000 gift to the biomedical engineering department made by Vincent L. DeCaprio and his wife, Mary Lou, with the provision that it be used to help children. DeCaprio, a member of the NJIT Board of Trustees, is also a 1972 graduate of the university.

“In a nation of technological riches, there is no better way for engineers to use their talents than to find new technologies to help people with disabilities, especially children,” says Foulds. The NJIT team will first develop therapeutic technologies in the university’s biomedical engineering laboratories and then test promising prototypes at Children’s Specialized Hospital, the largest pediatric rehabilitation hospital in the country.

During the next five years, some 200 children are expected to take part in the NJIT center’s six research projects. The projects are led by Foulds, an associate professor, Mantilla, a special lecturer who is also a neurosurgeon, and Adamovich, an assistant professor. All are in NJIT’s growing Department of Biomedical Engineering. Other faculty in the department and dozens of NJIT undergraduates and graduate students will contribute to these projects. [Read More]