Resources and Implementation Sites

The Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC) is comprised of two major institutions across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst), combining the Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences (Manning CICS) and the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing, and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Through its member institutions and a National Network of Pilot Partners (N2P2), the MassAITC will bring to bear the combined resources of multiple existing centers and institutes and state-of-the-art research facilities.

Mass AITC Research Facilities

The following research facilities can be made available to MassAITC pilot projects as fee for service or through partnering with an investigator at these sites.

Institute of Applied Life Sciences (IALS), UMass Amherst
  • IALS Center for Human Health and Performance: Houses multiple lab facilities including:
    • The Human Motion Lab. Designed and equipped for assessment of human movement and the evaluation of wearable technologies for quantifying human motion. The lab is a 38’x20′ facility equipped with a Qualysys Oqus Infrared Motion Capture System, AMTI force platforms, and associated data processing software.
    • The Living Science Lab. A unique home-like setting where researchers are able to investigate human behavior for prolonged periods. Includes living room and kitchen areas as well as a suite of wearable sensors and a Noldus Viso observation system.
    • Exercise Intervention & Outcomes Lab. Houses a wide variety of equipment that to evaluate clinical markers of health including cardio-metabolic function and body composition. Includes a GE Lunar iDXA system.
  • IALS Sleep Monitoring Lab: The only sleep research facility in the region equipped for overnight sleep studies to assess sleep and sleep physiology. The center has three bedrooms that can be used for polysomnography, the gold standard for sleep measurement.
  • IALS Sensor Integration Facility: This facility has equipment for precise integration of optical and electronic components into compact systems. Available equipment includes a probe station with laser cutter, wafer saw, wire bonders, a flip chip bonder, via plating, and a laser PCB prototyping tool.
  • IALS mHealth Lab: The mHealth Lab supports performing mobile health experiments at scale and developing robust and personalized mHealth detectors. Services include the development of sensor-based mobile data collection platforms as well as data analytics.
  • Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence – dataCore: This core provides data science and software engineering services in support of research and development to outside government, non-profit, and for-profit enterprises. Services offered include analysis, application development, deployment, and prototyping in areas such as data science, security, forensics, software development, informatics, machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and cloud computing. Data Core has access to the full range of research computing services provided by the UMass Amherst, including the Unity HPC cluster consisting of over 1,000 GPUs and over 5,000 CPU cores.
Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (MADRC), Mass General Hospital

The MADRC is an NIA-funded P30 center that has been at the forefront of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) research, education, treatment, and care since 1984.

  • MADRC Longitudinal Cohort: The MADRC maintains a longitudinal cohort of 400 deeply phenotyped older adults spanning the cognitive spectrum from normal cognition to dementia, including individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia, and other related disorders. Participants undergo annual cognitive and behavioral assessments, with additional data collected through neuroimaging, blood, and/or CSF collection. All data are standardized using the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set (UDS). The MADRC provides a valuable resource for MassAITC pilot projects, offering access to a well-characterized longitudinal cohort for participant recruitment to support the development and validation of AI and digital health technologies across a broad range of applications in aging and AD/ADRD.
  • MADRC Tech Ready Cohort: This cohort was established in 2024 to create a sub cohort within the MADRC Longitudinal Cohort for the research & development and validation of novel technologies and algorithms including but not limited to wearables and voice based and other digital biomarkers. To date, the cohort includes 80 older adults (40 cognitively normal and 40 MCI/dementia) with plans for continued expansion across the MADRC and MGH patient populations. The goal of this cohort is to enable a deeply phenotyped, including digital phenotyping, pool of older adults where rapid deployments of AITC funded projects can be readily validated against gold-standards and comparisons across prior technologies can be made around acceptability and usability. Additionally, this cohort presents a unique opportunity for technological behavioral interventions to be tested under the NIH Stage Model for behavior intervention development.
  • MADRC Biomarker Core: The MADRC Biomarker Core provides infrastructure and expertise for biofluid processing, immunochemical and molecular assays, molecular biology techniques (including DNA and RNA isolation and PCR), histology, and microscopy. The Core is equipped with specialized instrumentation to support biomarker discovery and validation. It also provides access to biospecimens, including blood and CSF, collected from participants in the MADRC longitudinal cohort, enabling studies of biomarkers associated with aging, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias
  • Clinical and Translation Research Unit (CTRU): The CTRU takes a multidisciplinary, bench-to-bedside approach to designing and conducting patient-oriented experimental studies and clinical trials focused on aging, dementia, and other neurodegenerative disorders, including Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease dementia. The unit integrates advanced digital health assessments, neuroimaging, and ultrasensitive molecular biomarker technologies for analyzing blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and brain tissue. CTRU infrastructure includes neurophysiological monitoring, neurostimulation and digital health technologies, fully equipped examination and procedure rooms with audiovisual recording capabilities, automated ultrasensitive fluid biomarker assays, and data visualization and virtual reality systems. The CTRU provides a valuable resource for MassAITC pilot projects involving the development, validation, and clinical evaluation of digital health technologies, biomarkers, and AI-driven approaches for aging and AD/ADRD.

Additional Implementation Sites

MassAITC has created a National Network of Pilot Partners (N2P2) comprised of organizations who can serve as implementation sites or otherwise partner with pilot applicants to carry out their project. You’ll find the initial cohort of pre-vetted N2P2 sites below:

Center for Innovation, Technology and Aging (CITA) at University of South Florida

CITA includes 43 core and affiliated faculty members with expertise across a range of health and tech topics.  They also have affiliation with 3 different medical systems.  

Recruitment Capacity: CITA can conduct participant recruitment, including healthy older adults, people with MCI, people with AD/ADRD, and caregivers.  They also can recruit participants via EHR Cohorts.

Available Resources and Facilities:

  • Fabrication, machining & 3D printing
  • Electronics and Instrumentation
  • Datasets
  • Robotics
  • Motion Capture, gait & force lab
  • High End GPU workstations and clusters
  • Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality
  • Driving simulator
  • Behavioral Observation labs
  • Sleep lab
  • Imaging
  • Biobank with 1000 samples
  • Audiology and Hearing Assessment
Kansas University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (KU-ADRC)

Recruitment Capacity: 

  • Participant recruitment including for healthy older adults, people with MCI, people with AD/ADRD, caregivers, or caregiver-care patient dyads
  • Research Registry of 10,000 older adults
  • Longitudinal Observation Cohort of 500 participants, including about 100 with MCI and about 100 with AD/ADRD
  • Caregiver Cohort of 84 participants 
  • Capability of recruiting through EHR 

Available Resources and Facilities:

  • Sleep Lab
  • Gait Lab
  • Driving Simulator
  • Datasets on brain aging, Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias for secondary analysis
  • Biobank which includes Buffy Coat, Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF), Cybrid Cell Lines, DNA, Plasma, Platelet-Poor Plasma, Platelets, Serum, Whole Blood, Brain Tissue, Fibroblast Cell Lines, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs), Neural progenitor Cell (NPCs), Muscle Tissue, Postmortem CSF, and Skin
  • Neuroimaging Core, which supports both prospective and secondary research through imaging data acquisition, management, and analysis.  The Core has expertise in MRI and PET imaging and can assist investigators with study design, image acquisition, image processing, quality control, and analysis of neuroimaging datasets.
  • Biomarker Core, which provides expertise and support for biospecimen collection, processing, and storage protocols and can assist investigators with fluid biomarker analyses and a broad range of molecular, cellular, and bioenergetics-focused assays.

Available Services:

  • Study Coordination
  • IRB Consultation

The team at KU ADRC has experience working with ActiGraph®, Fitbit®, and Garmin® wearable devices. 

Center Communities of Brookline

Center Communities of Brookline (CCB) is part of the family of Hebrew Senior Life senior living facilities. CCB is a 4 building, 565 unit affordable independent senior living facility with supportive services located in Brookline MA. CCB is open to being a potential pilot project site for various technologies that demonstrate a benefit to support of older adults or an organizational need. They would be willing to provide a small onsite office space to assist with the pilot program. Any potential partner or program will require legal review of but not limited to, ensuring protection of residents, privacy, and health information.