Ranu Jung, PhD, has been named the founding executive director of the Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I³R) at the University of Arkansas. She will begin her position in December.
As the inaugural executive director, Jung will play a role developing the new research building, hiring the directors and faculty for the five innovation clusters
within the institute, building industry partnerships, and supporting the Collaborative, the university’s education and research center. She is a researcher in biomedical and neural engineering, with more than $27 million in research grants awarded as a principal or co-principal investigator, more than 100 refereed publications and 12 US patents. She and her research team created the first wireless, implantable, neural-interface system for restoring sensations to those with amputations and will conduct first-in-human trials.
“As the university celebrates its sesquicentennial, I am deeply honored to have been selected as the founding executive director of I³R, a visionary, pioneering, trans-disciplinary institute,” she said.
Jung most recently held the Wallace H. Coulter Eminent Scholar endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Florida International University (FIU), where she served as professor and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering since 2011. At FIU, she led the Adaptive Neural Systems Laboratory, designing and developing technology to offset the effects of limb amputation, orthopedic injury, and disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases. Jung was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2017, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2013, and the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2020.
To read more about Ranu’s work, visit DOD Awards $6M for Prosthetic Hand Testing; FIU Receives FDA Approval to Trial Neural-controlled Prosthetic Hand.
