Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that causes the destruction of the pancreatic beta cells, permanently suppressing insulin secretion and requiring patients to manually inject or infuse insulin to keep blood sugar levels close to normal. Self-treatment of T1D can be regarded as a closed-loop control system with a significant “human-in-the-loop” aspect. Artificial pancreas (AP) systems seek to both improve glycemic outcomes and reduce cognitive burden associated with self-treatment by taking advantage of modern glucose monitoring and insulin pump technology. While the systems that have been proposed so far differ in the nature and extent of patient interaction, all such systems involve closing the feedback loop through a portable computational platform with wireless access to both sensors and actuators. Clearly systems of this type involve many Cyber-Physical aspects: wireless sensing and actuation, including remote monitoring of patient status, feedback control with humans-in-the-loop, and uncertainty management. This seminar will explore these aspects from both a theoretical and practical perspective, providing, along the way, an overview of the University of Virginia experience in developing and testing an ambulatory artificial pancreas device, the Diabetes Assistant (DiAs).
Stephen Patek is an Associate Professor of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia, working generally in the theory and practice of stochastic optimization and control. He has been involved in diabetes technology research since 2007, contributing to control algorithm design efforts for UVA’s JDRF-funded “artificial pancreas” project. His recent work focuses especially on interactions between human behavior (eating and exercise) and automation support for maintaining blood glucose concentration close to normal levels. Dr. Patek also serves as the Associate Director of the Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology at UVA, which addresses issues of information management in mission critical wireless systems. His recent work within the WICAT addresses protocol mechanisms for dynamically allocating bandwidth for end-users operating in constrained networks, with applications in reporting health data to back end systems. Dr. Patek received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 1991. He received his M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and 1997, under an ONR Fellowship.