The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.
Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) have significant negative consequences for the affected individuals, their families and communities, as well as society due to the significant public health and economic burden. While the opioid epidemic currently ravaging communities throughout the US has garnered national attention, SUDs are a long-standing challenge, involve a variety of substances, and are expected to be of societal concern for the foreseeable future. In recent years, there has been a marked shift towards a solution-oriented recovery paradigm for addressing SUDs that emphasizes non-clinical alternatives to treatment, early identification of at-risk behavior, post-treatment monitoring and relapse prevention, and sustaining long-term recovery through strengthening community networks. In such a paradigm, engineering approaches can address important gaps in knowledge and build capacity for preventing relapse and maintaining recovery. In this planning grant, George Mason University and our partners seek to conduct the planning activities necessary to create a powerful and impactful Engineering Research Center (ERC) focused on empowering communities of recovery around individuals with SUDs using engineered systems to achieve measurable improvements in long-term health and wellness. The proposed planning activities will engage students from diverse backgrounds, such as neuroscience, psychology, nursing, computer science, electrical engineering and bioengineering to work together using a convergence approach to tackle a significant societal challenge.
The objectives of this ERC planning grant are to: (1) strengthen relationships between academic partners and SUDs stakeholder communities, (2) form a diverse, multidisciplinary ERC team, a high-performing executive leadership team, and a robust, community-engaged governance structure to guide implementation of the ERC programmatic activities across all four foundational elements (Research, Workforce Development, Culture of Inclusion, Innovation Ecosystem) and (3) develop a comprehensive strategic framework, building around a collective vision for supporting technology-empowered communities of recovery. The planning grant team will formulate a number of hypotheses about current barriers and gaps in research knowledge, and engineering approaches that can be used to address these gaps. We will then iteratively update these hypotheses and solutions based on analysis of collected evidence from stakeholders and develop a framing paper. We will organize a strategic planning retreat with key stakeholders to develop a research agenda. Based on the identified research agenda, we will identify an appropriate ERC leadership team and organize a national symposium to refine the motivating vision and critical needs. The anticipated benefits of the planning grant will include a coordination of efforts across different communities, identification of stakeholder needs and priorities with long-, mid- and near-term impact, documentation of best practices and development of a convergent multi-system framework for addressing the underlying challenges using an engineered system approach at multiple scales, from individuals, family and caregivers, and community support networks.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
