ASSIST Students Push Toward Sleep Apnea Innovation

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) the most common form of sleep apnea is a disorder characterized by
blockage of airflow during sleep and affects more than 12 million people in the U.S. While common in
the 40 to 60 year age bracket, many people are predisposed to develop OSA, which can be life
threatening if not treated properly. While millions of Americans suffer from OSA, there are only two
first-line treatments to mitigate its effects: continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and mandibular
repositioning devices (MRDs). CPAP keeps the airway open during sleep by blowing a constant stream of
air into the throat using a mask that covers the mouth and/or nose. MRDs are oral appliances that fit
between the upper and lower teeth, protruding the lower jaw in one, fixed forward position for the
entire night to reduce the collapsibility of the airway. Although CPAP provides a more efficacious
therapy than MRDs, recent studies suggest that both therapies are comparable in overall treatment
effectiveness due to greater patient preference and adherence to MRDs.
Rita Brugarolas and Jose Manuel Valero-Sarmiento, ASSIST PhD students in Electrical Engineering and
research assistants in the iBionics Laboratory at North Carolina State University, conceived a novel idea:
an auto-titrating oral appliance for at home use. Ideation of this project came about when the two
partnered in Dr. Troy Nagles Medical Instrumentation class at NC State University. Roughly prototyping
the project within this course, the two continued research when taking Product Innovation Lab a core
course in the ASSIST graduate certificate in nano-systems engineering.
Brugarolas and Valero-Sarmiento provided an overview of their research Development of an AutoAdjusting Mandibular Repositioning Device for In-Home Use:
What we invented is a device to make oral appliances (MRDs) that are used in the home auto-adjusting.
The device includes a sensor platform to detect difficulty in breathing and an actuator to protrude the
lower jaw only when needed, improving patient comfort and potentially minimizing the short and long
term side-effects of MRDs caused by unnecessarily excessive jaw advancement. In addition our solution
provides patients, physicians, dentists and insurance companies with information about device usage
and efficacy of treatment, which is not available in current MRDs.
A collaboration with Dr. Greg Essick from the UNC School of Dentistry has proven highly beneficial for
the student researchers. On top of their partnerships with medical professionals, Brugarolas and ValeroSarmiento have been awarded high honors for their novel research. Their work was recently selected as
one of three recipients of the American Academy of Dental Sleep medicine (AADSM) Student Research
Award, based on the scientific merit of their abstract submitted to and presented at the 2015 AADSM
24th Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington on June 4 6. Additionally, they received first place in the
graduate category at theSeventh Annual Leadership and Innovative Showcase organized by the Poole
College of Management and NC State University.
Brugarolas states that it has been a great multidisciplinary learning experience in which we have
interacted with students and experts from very different fields in order to shape our idea into a working
prototype. We had to leave our comfort zone and learn about materials and pneumatics to build the
actuator. We also applied our expertise to work out the electronics for the sensor integration and the
Bluetooth data transmission, and to develop machine learning algorithms to process the sensor data. I

think that this Systems Thinking competence is one of the key skills that ASSIST provides to the
students.
For more details on the device: Journal of Dental Sleep Medicine 24th Annual Meeting of the American
Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (Poster #013)
Please contact rbrugar@ncsu.edu for more information about the IP related to this research.
About ASSIST
The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of
Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) develops and employs nano-enabled energy harvesting,
energy storage, nanodevices, and sensors to create innovative, battery-free and body-powered
wearable health monitoring systems. This center of excellence received funding from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) in 2012 for five years of research, renewable out until 2022.
Media Contact
Shanna Rogers
Smroger2@ncsu.edu
919.515.0734
assist.ncsu.edu

ASSIST Teams with Bright Wolf, IOT Innovation Afoot

Bright Wolf, LLC, a Research Triangle based Internet of Things software company, has joined ASSIST as
an Affiliate Industry member. With specialization in IoT application development, systems integration
and solutions delivery, Bright Wolf brings to the Center fundamental knowledge in the areas of IoT and
data analysis based on decades of experience. Bright Wolfs purpose built horizontal platform is a
comprehensive IoT application development and deployment offering that serves all industries. Battle
tested with national and international deployments the Bright Wolf Platform is designed to support
secure, industrial strength, edge-to-enterprise solutions.
Tom Snyder, ASSISTs Industry Liaison Officer, explains that Bright Wolfs experience can help with
practical inputs into [ASSISTs] data fusion areas as well as making the data actionable and
intelligent. Both ASSIST and Bright Wolf are heavily involved in the IoT space, inclusive of a regional
meet up group: NC Regional Internet of Things (NC RIoT). NC RIoT provides an organized community
for the established IoT ecosystem in North Carolina, helping to position the state as a global hub for
emerging connected technologies.
Bright Wolf joins 30 other industry member partners, some of which include: Semprius, Coca Cola, Rex
Health Care, and Vancive Medical Technologies. Partnerships with outside companies continue to fuel
the growth of the ASSIST Center while offering first-rate benefits. If you are interested in partnering
with, sponsoring or joining the ASSIST Center, please contact Tom Snyder (tdsnyder@ncsu.edu) for more
information.
About Bright Wolf LLC
Bright Wolf, founded in 2009, enables solutions that transform people, processes and products through
the Internet of Things. Bright Wolfs purpose-built platform, shaped by decades of connected systems
experience and augmented by our full spectrum application development, operations and support
services, accelerates development and deployment of secure, industrial-strength, future-resistant
systems allowing companies to harness innovative IoT solutions. www.bright-wolf.com
About ASSIST
The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of
Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) develops and employs nano-enabled energy harvesting,
energy storage, nanodevices, and sensors to create innovative, battery-free and body-powered
wearable health monitoring systems. This center of excellence received funding from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) in 2012 for five years of research, renewable out until 2022.
Media Contact
Shanna Rogers
Smroger2@ncsu.edu
919.515.0734
assist.ncsu.edu

Researchers Gain Best Paper Award Prove Need for ASSIST Technologies
Hosted on the reputable MIT campus, the IEEE Body Sensor Networks Conference 2015 brought a
diverse group of military and corporate entities along with academic researchers and physicians
together in an open colloquium. The 12th annual conference focused on research unique to body sensor
networks and allowed participants a unique forum to discuss key issues and innovative solutions for
sensors, communications, algorithms, systems and applications of body sensor networks. Among
attendees and presenters was ASSIST graduate student James Dieffenderfer who is also a graduate
research assistant in Integrated Bionic MicroSystems Laboratory at North Carolina State University.
Dieffenderfer presented ASSISTs multi-university and multi-disciplinary research Wearable Wireless
Sensors for Chronic Respiratory Disease Monitoring. Authors on this paper include Drs. Alper Bozkurt,
Jesse Jur, and David Peden along with ASSIST students Dieffenderfer, Henry Goodell, Brinnae Bent, Eric
Beppler, Rochana Jayakumar and Murat Yokus. With a novel focus on correlated sensing of
environmental and physiological vitals, the paper garnered Best Paper Award at BSN 2015.
Dieffenderfer explains the Body Sensor Network conference was a unique opportunity to converse with
both industry and academia. It was great to see how well our research was received and we plan on
attending the conference next year as well to present the next generation version of our system.
This research focuses on the current state of wearables in relation to environmental and physiological
sensing. As an exploratory first step, the team aggregated commercially off-the-shelf systems into the
ASSIST Gen-0 testbed platforms to prove effectiveness of the current products on market. Both the
wristband and chest patch constructions overconsumed power, requiring 78mW and 33mW
respectively. While fundamentally this research is novel due to the nature of low power correlated
sensing between the two parameters on a single platform, this research sheds light to the necessity of
ASSIST nano-based ultra-low power electronics and energy harvesting research.
As the Testbed Leader for the Health and Environmental Tracking, Dr. Alper Bozkurt stated With a
Centerwide goal of 1mW power consumption for each overall platform, in this study we demonstrated
that ASSISTs goal of ultra-low power physiological and environmental sensing is not possible with COTS
products. Yet, this chest-patch, wristband and spirometer based wearable platform provides multimodal
sensing capability to track the wellness of subjects in terms of exposure related respiratory health. Drs.
Bozkurt, Jur, Peden, their teams and ASSIST as a whole have the goal to produce technologies that are
proactive rather than reactive to asthma attacks; this comes in the form of asthma attack prediction in
the hopes to prevent overdoses of corticosteroids. Researchers are pushing forward into the nanoengineering realm in order to produce the highly functional, accurate, low-power chest and wrist
platforms to fulfil these goals.
About ASSIST
The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of
Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) develops and employs nano-enabled energy harvesting,
energy storage, nanodevices, and sensors to create innovative, battery-free and body-powered
wearable health monitoring systems. This center of excellence received funding from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) in 2012 for five years of research, renewable out until 2022.