Professor Andrew Mason (Electrical and Computer Engineering) received a $1.9M R01 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) for work on “Autonomous Electromechanical Gas Detection Microsystem for Mine Safety”. This research project will explore new sensor and instrumentation technologies to enable portable, wireless monitoring of hazardous gas concentrations in underground mines that can lead to explosions, fires, or otherwise impact the safety and wellbeing of mine workers. New microsystem technologies that are intrinsically safe and robust will be developed to improve mine safety and overcome the cost-per-performance shortcomings of existing multi-gas sensing systems. Ultra miniaturized, low-cost, low-power, highly reliable, multi-analyte sensor systems providing continuous real-time measurement of mine gases will be developed to enable affordable enhancement of mine-wide monitoring.

This four year project began in fall 2010 and involves a multi-institute, multi-disciplinary team with expertise in electrochemical sensor interfaces, microelectronics and microsystem fabrication, data mining and pattern recognition algorithms, and mine safety. The co-investigators are Professors Xiangqun Zeng (Oakland University, Chemistry), Rong Jin (Michigan State University, Computer Science), and Larry Grayson (Penn State University, Energy and Minerals Engineering).