NCInnovation Is Helping Wilmington Unlock the Science of Sleep
By Michelle Fiscus, Senior VP & Chief Communications Officer
We spend nearly a third of our lives asleep.
It is during those quiet hours that our brains restore memories, our bodies recover from the day, and countless biological processes work to keep us healthy. Yet despite decades of advances in medicine, those eight hours remain one of the least understood parts of human health.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington believe the answers may already exist.
Hidden within the electrical signals produced by the brain and heart while we sleep are patterns that could one day reveal the earliest signs of neurological disease, help physicians monitor recovery from traumatic brain injuries, improve human performance, and provide entirely new insights into long-term health.
That possibility is driving one of NCInnovation's newest commercialization projects, where university researchers and Wilmington-based life sciences company Nuream are developing technology that could quietly collect clinical-quality brain and heart data while someone sleeps naturally at home.
If successful, the project has implications far beyond sleep science. It demonstrates how North Carolina's universities, entrepreneurs, and commercialization experts can work together to transform research discoveries into technologies that improve lives while creating new economic opportunities for the regions where they are developed.
For Nuream founder Rob Cooley, the inspiration came from years spent working in life sciences—and years spent struggling with sleep himself.
"There are a thousand things on the sleep market," Cooley said. "Nobody wants to wear devices. It has to be invisible to the consumer. Everybody goes to sleep on a pillowcase."
That simple observation sparked an ambitious idea: What if a pillowcase itself could become a medical-grade sensing device?
Instead of asking patients to spend the night in a sleep laboratory connected to wires and electrodes, conductive fabric could capture electrical signals from the brain and heart without changing a person's nightly routine.
Turning that vision into reality required expertise that no single organization possessed.
Cooley brought decades of experience commercializing life science technologies. He partnered with Karl Ricanek Jr., Ph.D., professor of computer science at UNCW, and a globally recognized leader in artificial intelligence and technology commercialization, and Alex McDaniel, Ph.D., associate professor in UNCW's School of Health and Applied Human Sciences, whose research focuses on human performance, physiology and biomedical signal acquisition.
Together, they formed what the team describes as the right "human capital stack"—bringing together entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, physiology and commercialization expertise to solve a challenge none could solve alone.
Creating conductive fabric capable of detecting brain activity is only the first challenge.
Understanding what those signals actually mean is where the science becomes transformative.
Every night, the human brain produces enormous amounts of electrical activity. Mixed within that activity are signals from the heart, surrounding electronics and countless other sources of interference.
Ricanek's laboratory is developing the artificial intelligence engine behind the technology—creating entirely new algorithms capable of separating brain and heart signals from background electrical noise, identifying meaningful patterns within massive datasets and relating those patterns to human health.
"We have to get that information that comes through the fabric," Ricanek explained. "The algorithm side... the algorithm to take these signals and extract information... harvest this data and relate it to disease. This is net new IP."
That algorithmic layer represents one of the project's most significant innovations.
Rather than simply recording information, the AI models are being designed to recognize patterns that could eventually help researchers identify early indicators of disease, monitor cognitive recovery, measure restorative sleep, and better understand how the brain and heart work together over time. The long-term goal is not simply to collect more data, but to build predictive models that transform that data into meaningful health insights for physicians and patients.
Collecting clean brain signals through fabric presents an equally difficult engineering challenge.
Today, the team's prototype relies on a research-grade EEG system to validate the technology and collect pilot data. With support from NCInnovation, the researchers are developing their own dedicated data acquisition unit—an important step toward transforming a laboratory prototype into a commercially viable product.
McDaniel said the difficulty isn't finding electrical signals.
It's removing everything that isn't relevant.
"When you have this type of sensor, it's in an open space and you get noise sources because it's extremely sensitive," McDaniel said. "We have to filter out those signals so that we isolate the brain and other bioelectric signals."
As testing progressed, the researchers made another discovery.
Not only could they detect brain activity, they found they could also capture heart signals through the same platform—opening opportunities to better understand the relationship between neurological and cardiovascular health during sleep.
Those discoveries could eventually support applications ranging from concussion recovery and military readiness to earlier detection of neurological diseases, personalized health monitoring, and future telemedicine applications.
But to improve lives, the technology must move beyond the laboratory.
That transition—from university discovery to commercial technology—is precisely where NCInnovation plays a unique role.
"It's not just the funding, but it's the structure as well," Cooley said. "It's the understanding of how to go from research to a commercial product."
By pairing university researchers with experienced entrepreneurs and commercialization resources, NCInnovation helps create those pathways—giving promising discoveries a greater opportunity to reach the marketplace instead of remaining inside the laboratory.
For Cooley, success extends well beyond this technology.
His vision is to help establish Wilmington as a nationally recognized center for life sciences innovation—building on the region's existing strengths while creating opportunities for future companies.
"We want to create a life science pin that sits right next to the fintech pin here in Wilmington," Cooley said.
That vision closely mirrors NCInnovation's broader mission.
Rather than concentrating innovation in one part of the state, NCInnovation works alongside North Carolina's universities to help each region build on its unique research strengths and industry assets. In Wilmington, that means connecting world-class artificial intelligence research, biomedical engineering and entrepreneurial expertise to create companies capable of growing where the discoveries begin.
Projects like NeuroWeaveAI demonstrate how commercialization can become a catalyst for regional economic development. By helping university discoveries become North Carolina companies, attracting investment and talent, creating high-skilled jobs and strengthening emerging industry clusters, NCInnovation is helping regions like southeastern North Carolina build innovation economies rooted in the research taking place at their own universities.