News | Human Fusions

Discover how our work at the Human Fusions Institute is making headlines.

2023

On Sunday, March 26, the popular CBS program 60 Minutes brought national attention to groundbreaking work led by CWRU researchers Dustin Tyler and Bolu Ajiboye, biomedical engineering pioneers bringing a new sense of touch and hope to amputees and people with spinal cord injuries.

The featured research by Tyler, director of the Human Fusions Institute, and Ajiboye is part of a cross-institutional partnership with Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland FES Center, MetroHealth and University Hospitals.

Feel again: Advancements in prosthetics limb technology allow feeling, control
HFI Members Dustin Tyler and Pedram Mohseni are selected as part of the 2022 inductees for the National Academy of Innovators. Dr. Tyler is inducted as a Fellow and Dr. Mohseni as a Senior Member. The Induction Ceremonies will be held June 25-27, 2023 in Washington, D.C.
NAI Welcomes 95 New Emerging Innovators
NAI Inducts 2022 Fellows Class
National Academy of Inventors Home Page

Dr. Tyler and recipient of technology for restoring touch discuss the experience and value of restoring the lost sense of touch in Episode 20: Restoring a lost sense of touch (nationalgeographic.com) hosted by Peter Gwin.
See National Geographic article "The audacious science pushing the boundaries of human touch (nationalgeographic.com)" by Cynthia Gorney featuring the Human Fusions Institute and many aspects of its work in restoring the sense of touch.
- Lynn Johnson - National Geographic
Drs. Segil, Graczyk, Zingale, and Block organize and host the 2022 IEEE-HAPTICS conference Cross-Cutting Challenges symposium, "The Importance of Touch for Distributed Embodiment". Watch the event here.
Dr. Tyler and a limb loss subject meet with President Biden and Dr. Francis Collins - former Director of NIH, Dr. Alonda Nelson - Director of Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Stephanie Tompkins - Director of DARPA, and Dr. Lisa Cooper - Professor at Johns Hopkins University to discuss and provide input to the newly enacted ARPA-H legislation. WH Video, YouTube Video, Cleveland dot Com, theHill, The Case Daily, Case School of Engineering Report

The Human Fusion team competed in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE in Miami, Florida. A superstar team led by Dustin Tyler and consisting of collaborators and students from Case Western Reserve University (Led by Emily Graczyk and Michael Fu); Univ of California, Los Angeles (led by Veronica Santos); Cleveland State University (led by Nicholas Zingale); and University of Wyoming (led by Justin Piccorelli) demonstrated their Sensa Avatar system. Please look at our photo blog of the event.

“Seeking human connections across time and space: Case Western Reserve research team from Human Fusions Institute aims for $10 million Avatar XPrize competition; winner will best ‘transport a human’s sense, actions and presence’ to another place” (January 24, 2020)
World premier of “I Am Human” at Tribeca Film Festival (January 30, 2020)
“Restoring Touch for Amputees Could Spur Greater Human-Machine Fusions” (Cleveland FES Center, April 7, 2020)
“Biology and Human-machine Relationships in the Present” presentation by Dustin Tyler for the Origins Science Scholars Program at Case Western Reserve University (April 14, 2020; to air on PBS Ideastream)
“Human-machine relationships: Engineering the Future” presentation by Dustin Tyler for the Origins Science Scholars Program at Case Western Reserve University (April 21, 2020; to air on PBS Ideastream)

Society for Neuroscience Social Issues Round Table (October 20, 2019)
Link to announcement of funding for pilot development of the infrastructure of the OTHERNet to support human-technology symbiosis?
*Link to pilot demonstration of NeuroReality™?
*Link to development of systems to remove the war fighter from danger in the theater?
XPRIZE story
*Link to DARPA Seed Sprint announcement re: including human-in-the-loop control of drone swarms?
*Link to announcement re: successful completion of Phase I of development of Intelligent Neural Interfaces and awarding of Phase II grant to continue the work?
Completed pre-clinical development, fabrication process development, and verification of a completely implanted, Bluetooth™-connected HFi system;
Began formation and development of a ~$30MM proposal for HFi technology to “Bridge the Gap” in spinal cord injury.