Sridevi Sarma receives PECASE Award

Sridevi V. Sarma, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering has been selected to receive the 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The PECASE is awarded by the National Science Foundation and is the United States government’s highest honor for scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. Dr. Sarma is among 96 researchers who will receive the award at a ceremony at the White House later this year.

Dr. Sarma was recognized for her “transformative approach to design and control of electrical deep brain stimulation for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, and for innovative educational and outreach activities including mentoring of women in science and engineering.”

Describing her strategy, Dr. Sarma stated “Researchers such as myself, trained in control theory, look at complex systems to understand the individual parts and their interconnectedness. I apply this to the study of the brain. I want to use control theory tools to better understand the brain’s neural circuitry in the hopes of finding new treatments for disorders and disease. I am thrilled that the National Science Foundation has recognized my work, especially because it is geared more toward clinical impact.”

Dr. Sarma joined the JHU Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2009 and is a core faculty member in the Institute for Computational Medicine. In 2011, she was selected by the National Science Foundation to receive the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award for her work constructing an approach for modeling complex neural networks, and applying these to restoring pathological network dynamics arising from Parkinson’s disease with deep brain stimulation. Ultimately, her goal is to design more effective and safer stimulation strategies.