ESE Spring Seminar – “Next Generation Bioelectronic Medicine: Wireless Microelectronic Systems”

The ability to understand living systems in the body and attain therapeutic effects at target organs promises to transform therapies for complex diseases and conditions that cannot be treated adequately with drug-based therapies alone. The last decade has seen rapid advances in implantable medical devices (implants), ranging from new materials to increased implant sophistication and beyond. Despite these advances, existing implant technologies are heavily reliant on wires and batteries, creating problems for chronic use, while emerging wireless implant systems lack the size scalability necessary to minimize tissue damage and hence enable chronic use of the implant. My research focuses on addressing the challenges related to miniaturization to realize safe, chronic, scalable wireless microelectronic systems based on ultra-miniature implants with complex sensory and actuation functions for future bioelectronic medicine; these systems can seamlessly interface with the human body and operate at both shallow and deep tissue depths.

In this talk, I will present the first minimally invasive wireless system to monitor deep-tissue oxygenation. Spanning from the development of oxygen sensor implant enabled by custom integrated circuit and microsystems technologies to a wireless power/data transmission strategy, I will discuss the design of each fundamental component and show how we integrate these components to build the complete system. System-level in vivo and ex vivo demonstrations in this work highlight the enormous capabilities of wireless implant systems. I will also present our work in the extreme miniaturization of ultrasonic implants, and a new class of electro-optic sensors that will enable large-scale, high-density wireless neural interfaces. I will conclude by discussing research directions that I would like to pursue in the future.