CMI Awards $20,000 to Team in Round 1 2023 Early Stage Seed Grant Competition

Originally published on June 6, 2023 

The Center for Medical Innovation is pleased to announce an award of $20,000 for the Round-1 Early Stage R&D Seed Grant. The award went to the team of Trent Emerick, MD, MBA, Gaurav Chauhan, MD, and Youngjae Chun, PhD for “A Novel Low-Profile Fully Retrievable Foldable Epidural Lead Array (FELLA) System."

Dr. Emerick and Dr. Chauhan are with the UPMC Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine/ Division of Chronic Pain, and Dr. Chun is an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering with the Swanson School of Engineering. The grant will be used to develop and test an electrode array that can be used with conventional electrical stimulators to relieve pain originating from spinal nerves. The array will be placed via gaps in the spinal vertebrae, thereby avoiding the need for risky laminectomy surgeries.