Dr. James Tangorra (MEM) has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) grant entitled, “Multifunctional Materials Exhibiting Distributed Actuation, Sensing, and Control: Uncovering the Hierarchical Control of Fish for Developing Smarter Materials.” The goals of this multi-university collaborative research  project are to achieve a greater understanding of the hierarchical organization and structure of the sensory, muscular, and control systems of fish, and to develop advanced biologically-inspired material systems having distributed sensing, actuation, and intelligent control.   The work is a collaboration between Drexel University, Virginia Tech, and Harvard University with Virginia Tech being the lead institution.  The total award is $1.9M for the four year project, and Drexel’s portion is $380K.