Speaker: Maysam Ghovanloo, Georgia Institute of Technology
Title: Fundamental Building Blocks for Efficient Power and Wideband Data Transmission to mm-Sized Implantable Microelectronic Devices
Abstract: Wireless power and data transmission across short (mm to cm range) distance in the near-field domain is on the rise for a variety of applications from RFID and NFC to electric vehicles, smartphones, internet of things (IoT), as well as implantable microelectronic devices (IMD). Unlike pacemakers, extreme size constraints and high power consumption prevent many IMDs, such as cochlear/retinal implants and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) from using primary batteries as their energy source. Moreover, such devices need to deliver a sizable volume of information from external artificial sensors to the nervous system or from large neural populations to external processing tools that can infer the user intentions. The skin barrier should, however, remain intact and the temperature should remain well within the safe limits. In this talk I will review some of the latest techniques to deliver power with high efficiency to IMDs, particularly when the size of the implant is very small in the order of 1 mm, and establish wideband bidirectional communication links across the skin while staying within penetrating low-loss frequency bands. I will also touch on efficient methods to convert the received AC power to DC, boost it, and stabilize it at a desired level despite coupling variations due to significant coil misalignments. Using these methods, we have developed a distributed wireless neural interfacing system in the form of mm-sized “smart push-pins” that can be gently inserted into the cortex and cover a large area, while floating with the brain, without creating excessive sources of stress or strain around the electrodes because of tethering or micromotions. We are developing these free-floating distributed neural interfaces not only for wireless neural recording but also electrical and optical neuromodulation, together with a scalable ecosystem to evaluate their feasibility at the preclinical level on freely behaving small animals.
Bio: Maysam Ghovanloo received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran in 1994, and the M.S. degree in biomedical engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1997. He also received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
Dr. Ghovanloo developed the first modular Patient Care Monitoring System in Iran and started a company to manufacture research instruments for electrophysiology and pharmacology labs. From 2004 to 2007 he was an assistant professor in the Department of ECE at the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. Since 2007 he has been with the Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he is a professor and the founding director of the GT-Bionics Lab. In 2012 he started Bionic Sciences Inc., a technology transfer company, where he serves as the CTO. He has authored or coauthored more than 200 peer-reviewed conference and journal publications on implantable microelectronic devices, integrated circuits and microsystems for medical applications, and modern assistive/rehabilitation technologies. He also holds 8 issued patents.
Prof. Ghovanloo was a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Tommy Nobis Barrier Breaker Award for Innovation, and Distinguished Young Scholar Award from the Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. He serves on the Senior Editorial Board of the IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems (JETCAS). He served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Part II, as well as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and IEEE Transactions on Neural
Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. He chaired the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BioCAS 2015) in Atlanta, GA, and currently co-chairs the technical program committee for BioCAS 2018 in Cleveland, OH. He is also serving on the Analog subcommittee of the Custom Integrated Circuits Conf. (CICC).