Miloš Žefran awarded grant from George Crabtree Institute for Discovery
Miloš Žefran awarded grant from George Crabtree Institute for Discovery
Professor Miloš Žefran was selected for the George Crabtree Institute for Discovery’s Convergence Intelligence Seed Funding Program. The program is aimed at leveraging artificial intelligence and data science to enhance how we observe, measure, and understand natural phenomena.
Three teams that include both a researcher from UIC and a researcher from Argonne National Laboratory received funding. The award is a two-year commitment from UIC and Argonne, worth $225,000 per year. Each principal investigator will receive $75,000 annually.
Žefran and his Argonne collaborator, Neil Getty, an assistant computational scientist, were awarded funding for their project Predictive Latent Models of Deformable Surgical Field Dynamics. The duo is developing machine-learning methods and high-performance computing infrastructure to enable predictive latent modeling of deformable surgical field dynamics from large-scale robotic endoscopic imaging data.
In robotic surgery, surgical instruments and an endoscope mounted on robot manipulators are inserted into the body through small incisions. The surgeon remotely controls the instruments based on the images provided by the endoscope. During surgery, tissues and organs move around and change shape as they interact with the instruments. Predicting this behavior in real time is challenging, but it could provide important information to the surgeon on possible tissue damage. Žefran and Getty will use endoscopic videos collected during regular robotic surgeries to train a model of deformation dynamics during surgery.
Over 50 teams applied for funding, spanning disciplines from medical imaging and drug discovery to materials characterization, environmental monitoring, and manufacturing optimization. Other recipients include UIC’s Ruixuan Gao and Argonne’s Tom Uram (Argonne) for their project Light-Microscopy-based Brain Connectomics Reconstruction via Machine Learning and High-Performance Computing; and UIC’s Ahmed Abokifa with Argonne’s Jeffrey Elam for AI-Enabled Multi-Electrode Sensor Array for Detection and Quantification of Emerging Contaminants.
About the George Crabtree Institute for Discovery
The George Crabtree Institute for Discovery was established in 2024 as a joint initiative between the University of Illinois Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and is named in honor of George Crabtree, the late, renowned physicist who held positions at both Argonne and UIC. The institute is launching new research collaborations and training in STEM fields and is built around a vision to advance scientific knowledge and train a diverse generation of future pioneers in clean energy, computing, urban development and other critical areas.
In an interview with the UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences magazine, Crabtree said his return to UIC was motivated by a strong belief in the importance of public education.