# Engineering Core

> **NIH NIH U19** · HARVARD UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $339,899

## Abstract

Engineering Core-Abstract
The goal of the Engineering Core is to enable our Team members to surmount their most challenging technological and
engineering obstacles. There are many needs for engineering solutions in our proposal--from behavioral apparatus to
optical and electrophysiological rigs, to software for data acquisition and analyses. Even the most technologically
sophisticated of the research groups in our Team require special assistance with engineering problems in order to achieve
our ambitious aims. In the Center for Brain Science at Harvard there is an existing Engineering Core that consists of (a) an
integrated laboratory to design, prototype, iterate, and produce custom devices for neuroscience experiments and (b) an
engineer-neuroscientist who solves the most challenging engineering problems in the user laboratories and trains young
scientists to do this themselves. By adding a dedicated staff engineer, the Engineering Core will be able to support the
team-based neuroscience research proposed here. ​The specific aims are to implement engineering solutions to problems
faced by the Projects and other Cores. The Engineering Core will (a) design and build apparatuses to image rapidly
swimming larval zebrafish; (b) build other apparatuses to quantitatively assay complex zebrafish behavior; (c) build rigs
to record neural activity in larval zebrafish brains via calcium imaging; (d) fabricate rigs to record neural activity in larval
Drosophila and rat; and modify software for data acquisition in many existing experimental apparatus, including
microscopes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10241480
- **Project number:** 5U19NS104653-05
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** ARAVINTHAN D. SAMUEL
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $339,899
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-25 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10241480

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10241480, Engineering Core (5U19NS104653-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10241480. Licensed CC0.

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