The Gill Research Excellence Fund supports the Gill Professorships in Science and Engineering. The deans of the Colleges of Arts & Sciences and Engineering jointly administer the program. Professors are recommended by a committee based on a nomination letter.
“Dr. Sunderam directs a growing research program using signal processing and sensors to analyze brain rhythms related to sleep, and how these rhythms are disrupted in epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease,” said Abhijit Patwardhan, interim chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “His group also studies movement-related brain rhythms towards helping individuals with stroke and spinal cord injury recover motor function. Appointment as a Gill Professor in Engineering is a well-earned acknowledgment of Dr. Sunderam’s accomplishments.”
Sunderam directs the Neural Systems Laboratory, which is dedicated to the development of signal processing and brain-machine interface tools to model, track, and modulate sleep and motor function. These basic physiological functions are impacted by neural disorders such as epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and spinal cord injury. Sunderam has received several million dollars in research funding as Principal Investigator from the National Institutes of Health (NINDS and NIA) and the National Science Foundation. He has active collaborations with researchers across campus in medicine and the biological sciences and works with animal models as well as human subjects.