Frontiers of Medical Engineering Symposium
Dr. Anqi Zhang, Postdoctoral at Stanford University
Minimally invasive neuroelectronics. Neuroelectronic interfaces have enabled significant advances in both fundamental neuroscience research and the treatment of neurological disorders. However, current neuroelectronic devices have a clear trade-off between invasiveness and spatial resolution, and are unable to achieve seamless integration into the nervous system with cell-type specificity. In this talk, I will first introduce an ultra-small and flexible endovascular neural probe that can be implanted into sub-100-micron scale blood vessels in the brains of rodents without damaging the brain or vasculature. Second, I will describe a biochemically functionalized electronic probe that enables cell type- and neuron subtype-specific targeting and recording in the brain. Third, I will present a bottom-up approach for constructing neural interfaces from the cell surface, where neurons are genetically programmed to express membrane-localized enzymes that catalyze in situ assembly of functional materials. Finally, I will discuss future advances toward clinical translation of minimally invasive neuroelectronic interfaces capable of long-term monitoring and treatment of neurological disorders.
Biography: Dr. Anqi Zhang is currently a postdoctoral fellow co-advised by Professor Karl Deisseroth and Professor Zhenan Bao at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Charles M. Lieber at Harvard University in 2020, and her B.S. degree in Materials Science at Fudan University in 2014. She is interested in combining novel electronic, chemical, and genetic tools to monitor and modulate neural circuits in a minimally invasive manner.
________________________________________________________
Dr. Kolade Adebowale, Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University
Multiscale Mechanoimmunology: From Molecular Mechanisms to Precision Therapies. Therapeutic immune cells have the potential to treat complex diseases. Many cell therapies are ineffective against human solid cancers, which comprise about 90% of adult cancers. The physical, transport, and biological resistance mechanisms contributing to this lack of efficacy are not fully understood. My research program aims to address these research gaps. In this talk, I will show biomaterials I developed that mimic the viscoelastic mechanical cues native tissues present to cells. I discovered that monocytes use physical forces to generate micron-sized channels in these biomaterials, through which they migrate. Furthermore, I integrated macrophage migration data with an unsupervised k-means clustering algorithm to demonstrate that the transport properties of macrophages in tumors depend on macrophage phenotype and morphometric transitions. Together, our studies establish a platform to determine the role of mechanical cues in shaping the immune response and to leverage fundamental mechanisms to enable the rational design of "living drugs."
Biography: Kolade Adebowale is a postdoctoral fellow in bioengineering at Harvard University / Wyss Institute. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University. Kolade seeks to integrate engineering design principles to cancer immunology to enable rational engineering and prediction of effective, next-generation immune cell therapies. Further, Kolade strives to understand how the complex functionality of the immune system arises from mechanical cues and simple biophysical principles. Kolade is currently an NIH MOSAIC K99/R00 Scholar. His research has been funded by an NSF MPS-Ascend postdoctoral fellowship, an NIH F31 graduate fellowship, and an NSF GRFP. He is passionate about educating and training the next generation of engineers from all backgrounds and promoting a culture of inclusive excellence.
_____________________________________________________________
Dr. Xiao Yang, Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University
Bioinspired electronics for precision brain-machine interface. Bioelectronic devices have been very important both as fundamental research tools and as therapeutic avenues for treating brain disorders and injuries. I drew inspiration from biological systems and art forms to design and develop a series of bio-inspired and art-inspired bioelectronics with distinctive biomedical applications. I have introduced and developed bioinspired neuron-like electronics, a biomimetic brain-machine interface designed such that the key building blocks mimic the subcellular structural features and mechanical properties of neurons. I have developed multifunctional vasculature-like electronic scaffolds that guide and longitudinally track neural migration following brain injury. Moreover, we devised flexible kirigami-inspired electronics that transition from a 2D pattern to a 3D basket-like configuration to enable long-term integration and interrogation of human brain organoids and assembloids. Our studies advance bioelectronics in fundamental studies and therapeutic applications, encompassing neural probes for research, electronic scaffolds for brain repair, and tools for detecting human genetic diseases and tracking human neural development.
Biography: Dr. Xiao Yang is currently a Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University, working jointly in the laboratories of Professor Bianxiao Cui in Chemistry and Professor Sergiu P. Pașca in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Yang received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University under the guidance of Professor Charles M. Lieber in 2020, and her B.S. from College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University in 2015. She is interested in transforming bioelectronics and human brain organoids through innovations at the molecular, micro, and macro scales, and integrate devices with human brain organoids to create electronics-coupled human brain models.
______________________________________________________________
Dr. Jiho Shin, Research Scientist, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT
Next-generation bioelectronics enabled by inorganic single-crystalline semiconductor membranes. Inorganic single-crystalline semiconductors such as Si, GaN, and GaAs are the basis of essentially all electronic devices that we use today, as they offer the highest electronic/optoelectronic characteristics and functional stability. They are also major components of implantable and wearable bioelectronic systems that directly interface with the human body for disease diagnosis and neuroengineering purposes, but the bulkiness, rigidity, and overall lack of bio-friendliness of conventional semiconductor devices could cause various medical complications. In this seminar, I will introduce ways to construct more bio-friendly electronic systems by using inorganic single-crystalline semiconductor nanomembranes that have been peeled off from their epitaxial wafers. This process, broadly termed Layer Transfer, can yield ultrathin, flexible, and/or bioresorbable semiconductor devices that can less invasively interface with the human body. I will discuss three different classes of next-generation bioelectronics: bioresorbable implantable sensors, stackable optoelectronic neural interfaces, and flexible wearable sensors.
Biography: Jiho Shin is currently a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has a broad research background in micro/nanofabrication, electronic/optoelectronic/photonic/MEMS devices, IV/III-V/III-N semiconductor materials, and implantable/wearable sensors. As a research scientist in Jeehwan Kim group at MIT, he is leading projects in three-dimensional heterogeneous integration of single-crystalline III-V/III-N compound semiconductor membranes for brain-machine interface and AR/VR display applications. Before joining MIT, he received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), respectively. During his Ph.D. study in John Rogers group at UIUC, he developed bioresorbable intracranial MEMS/optical/photonic sensors using single-crystalline silicon nanomembranes. He has published 21 peer-reviewed articles including 6 first-authored papers in journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Biomedical Engineering.