# Technical Core

> **NIH NIH U2C** · NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY · 2023 · $2,221,251

## Abstract

Technical Core Summary
 The Technical Core will provide general infrastructure and tools to address technical challenges in adopting
mobile approaches to research including: participant recruitment, retention, and support; validating and
understanding new cognitive and non-cognitive tests and other physiological and environmental data; and
securing data appropriately in the context of significant participant privacy concerns. Under the original Mobile
Toolbox (MTB1) grant, we successfully built and deployed a system that allows researchers to select from a
library of validated measures, design a virtual study protocol that delivers these measures to participants through
an app running natively on their iOS or Android smartphone, and retrieve aggregated participant data through
web or programmatic interfaces. Our goal for the MTB platform is to provide a complete end-to-end solution for
the use of remotely administered cognitive and other non-cognitive measures by researcher teams. We will
achieve our overall goal to support the continued expansion and dissemination of remote mobile measures
through two aims: Aim 1: We will continuously expand the MTB library of remote, self-administered
measures; Aim 2: We will provide continued support and maintenance of the Mobile Toolbox platform
and extend its capabilities to make it increasingly easy for researchers to manage virtual interactions
with study participants to improve recruitment and adherence.
 We will focus on expansion into non-cognitive domains including contextual factors, and psychological,
physical, and behavioral functions, as well as the inclusion of passive sensor data streams to provide deeper
context for already validated measures. We will also streamline the communication between study managers
and remote participants, include support for custom survey questions to be delivered through the MTB app, and
adopt best practices on engagement for future study design. We will keep hardware and software up to date and
ensure continued reliability, performance, and security of the platform.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10729444
- **Project number:** 2U2CAG060426-06
- **Recipient organization:** NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Michael Robert Kellen
- **Activity code:** U2C (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $2,221,251
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2018-09-15 → 2028-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10729444

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10729444, Technical Core (2U2CAG060426-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10729444. Licensed CC0.

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