Title: Progress in Bioelectronics - From Lab-on-Chip to Lab-on-Things
Abstract: This talk will explore the recent progress made in the area of bioelectronics in the speaker’s research group. The talk will cover a wide variety of interdisciplinary projects from (1) Flexible smart bandages for monitoring and treating chronic wounds (2) Functionalized smart threads for tissue-embedded or on-skin diagnostics (3) Ingestible smart pills for studying the gut microbiome and (4) ultra-miniaturized CMOS-based instrumentation. The key theme that permeates through all the projects is the introduction of embedded intelligence into common things. This is made possible due to advances in flexible electronics for realization of truly conformal and flexible sensors and actuators, and leveraging the large scale integration of silicon CMOS-based electronics for instrumentation. For example, the talk will demonstrate a toolkit of sensors, microfluidics, electronics and drug delivery realized on textile threads. Threads offer unique advantages of universal availability, low cost, material diversity and simple textile-based processing. Another example is the use of 3D printing to make smart lab-on-a-pill devices for spatial sampling of the gut microbiome in vivo. Compared to fecal analysis done today, this ingestible pill has the potential to capture the spatial bacterial biogeography of the gut for the first time, and shed new light on host-microbiome interaction. Finally, the talk will also touch upon some integrated CMOS-based sensors or instrumentation that support the wide range of projects in the lab each with highly unique features. The talk will conclude with a perspective on the field of bioelectronics and the new possibilities it offers.
Biography: Sameer Sonkusale is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University with a joint appointment in the department of Biomedical Engineering and also the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He also held a visiting appointment at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of the Harvard Medical School for 2011-2012 and 2018-2019. For 2012-2013 Dr. Sonkusale was also the associate dean of graduate education in School of Engineering at Tufts University. Currently Sonkusale directs an interdisciplinary research group Nano Lab with research focus on biomedical microdevices circuits and systems, flexible bioelectronics, biosensors and CMOS-based instrumentation. The technologies developed in his labs have been licensed to companies and have resulted in creation of several startups.
Dr. Sonkusale received his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to Tufts, he was an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University from 2002 to 2004. He has received several awards including the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2010. He also received the Acorn Innovation Award from Massachusetts Technology Transfer Office in 2018. He is an alumnus of the National Academy of Engineering US Frontiers of Engineering meeting in 2015, and the National Academy of Sciences Arab-America Frontiers meeting in 2014 and 2016. Dr. Sonkusale is on the editorial boards of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Journal of Low Power Electronics and Application, and Electronic Letters. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and a member of OSA, MRS, BMES and AAAS.