UCO Professor Awarded Grant from the National Institutes of Health

Aug. 31, 2022

Media Contact: Tami Jackson, Development and Marketing Coordinator, UCO College of Mathematics and Science, 405-974-2740, tjackson45@uco.edu

UCO Professor Awarded Grant from the National Institutes of Health

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded a $410,515 research enhancement grant to University of Central Oklahoma faculty member Emily Hendryx, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science at UCO.

The grant, “Summarizing Cardiac Data: An Automated Approach for Identifying Representative Heartbeats in the Clinical Setting,” will be used to advance electrocardiogram (ECG) technology for pediatric patients. ECGs record electrical signals from the heart to check for different heart conditions.

With a constant stream of patient data generated at the hospital bedside, clinicians interpret the data, along with patient medical records and lab results, in real time. Successful completion of this project will offer an automated approach to support clinical decisions by evaluating the patient data using data science and applied mathematics techniques.

“We are so proud of Dr. Hendryx and this outstanding accomplishment,” said Charlotte Simmons, Ph.D., provost and vice president of Academic Affairs at Central.

The NIH research enhancement grant, also known as NIH R15, supports small-scale research projects at educational institutions.

“These grants are highly competitive, and this marks the first NIH R15 grant ever received at UCO,” Simmons said.

Through collaboration between Central, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital(TCH), this project combines processes and techniques to classify and summarize data recorded from pediatric intensive care unit patients at TCH. 

Hendryx, along with the contributions of Tyler Cook, Ph.D., associate professor in Central’s Department of Mathematics and Science, will oversee undergraduate students at UCO as they use various machine-learning methods to perform noise detection and further reduce the patient data to a more interpretable subset.

The research findings from this grant will provide a framework that presents clinicians with a representation of a patient’s recent cardiac health history. With the long-term goal of providing clinical decision support toward improving cardiac patient outcomes, undergraduate students will also have an opportunity to participate in innovative interdisciplinary research.

For more information about the UCO College of Mathematics and Science, visit www.uco.edu/cms/.

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Editor's Note: Download art associated with this release at https://media.uco.edu/press/uploads/2022/08/hendryx-emily-2-cropped.jpg

Cutline: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded a $410,515 research enhancement grant to University of Central Oklahoma faculty member Emily Hendryx, Ph.D., pictured, assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science at UCO. The grant titled, “Summarizing Cardiac Data: An Automated Approach for Identifying Representative Heartbeats in the Clinical Setting,” will be used to advance electrocardiogram (ECG) technology for pediatric patients. ECGs record electrical signals from the heart to check for different heart conditions.