Research Associate Janet Gbur was recently awarded a grant from the 2020 Advanced Platform Technology Center Garverick Innovation Incentive Program for her research, “Development of Flexible, Printed Lead Body for Use in Minimally Invasive Pain Management Systems.”

Gbur, who is also an investigator in the Advanced Platform Technology Center (APTC) at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, will use the grant to do research to develop a flexible, implantable printed lead body to address the challenges of fabricating high density electrode electronics while maintaining robust chronic performance.  Her co-investigators on the project will be with Kent H. Smith Professor II of Biomedical Engineering Dustin Tyler, who is also the APTC associate director; VA Research Career Scientist Kath Bogie, who is also an Associate Professor in the Departments of Orthopaedics and Biomedical Engineering at CWRU; and VA Research Health Scientist Doug Shire.  Research will be conducted in the Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Reliability Center at CWRU, which is also an APTC lab.  The other lab on the CWRU campus that will be used is the Additive Manufacturing for Biotechnology in the School of Medicine.  "This project will be a nice cross-utilization and cross-disciplinary approach using the AMMRC (EMSE), AMB (School of Medicine), and the APTC at the VA," said Gbur.

The grant, matched by the VA Foundation, is worth $50,000 and funds innovative research related to the emphasis areas of the center.  The program is named after Steven Garverick, a former Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who died in 2013. Garverick was an advisor to the APTC from its inception.  The program was designed in 2010 to strengthen ties between APTC investigators and interested clinical collaborators, as well as to provide support to acquire the preliminary data for the research needed to support future independent funding.  In 2014, the program was renamed to honor Garverick.

The APTC is a VA Rehabilitation Research Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center established in partnership with CWRU.