Hu receives NSF CAREER Award

Dr. Xiaogang Hu, assistant professor in the UNC/NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, has received a Faculty Early Career Development award, also known as the CAREER Award, from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young faculty members in science and engineering.

NSF will provide $500,000 in funding over five years to support his project, “Robust Decoding of Neural Command for Real Time Human Machine Interactions.”

Hu’s research goal is to decode the descending neural command/drive that controls individual finger movement, by extracting spinal motoneuron discharge activities using source separation of high-density EMG signals. The impact of this research will be profound on the general field of human-machine interaction and neural rehabilitation. Additionally, Hu will integrate his research with education through undergraduate and graduate level course development and aid in the expansion of current courses.

He received his B.E. in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University in China and his Ph.D. degree in kinesiology with a focus on neural control of muscle force and a minor in computational science in the Department of Aerospace Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.