Ahmet Ugur, associate professor of computer science, received a five-year award in collaboration with the University of Arkansas to predict premature infants most at risk of intraventricular hemorrhage.

This project involves studying heart rate dynamics as a potential predictor of intraventricular hemorrhage . Annually, nearly 5,000 extremely low birth weight infants in the US develop severe IVH, a devastating complication associated with long-term cognitive, behavioral and learning disabilities.

"Our overall goal is to prospectively evaluate physiological phenomena associated with IVH in order to predict those infants most at risk and to develop best care clinical practices that may subsequently limit severe IVH in ELBW infants," says Ugur.

Ugur is considered an expert on advanced nonlinear dynamical methods suitable for analyzing biomedical data. As a co-investigator on the grant, he is responsible for nonlinear dynamic analysis of the IVH data provided by the primary investigator, Professor Jeffrey Kaiser, M.D., at the University of Arkansas Medical School in Little Rock.

Grant: Physiological Disturbances Associated with Neonatal Intraventricular Hemorrhage, National Institutes of Health, $348,000.