Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Jun-Chau Chien

Chien Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

Wei Foo

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2028 (Anticipated)

B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Caltech (2019 - 2023)

BPNX1004: Low Noise Electrochemical Aptamer-Based Sensing Device

Ya-Chen (Justine) Tsai
2025

The Electrochemical Aptamer-based (E-AB) sensors provide continuous and real-time monitoring of specific target molecules, including proteins, antibiotics, neurotransmitters, and more. Due to the cost-effectiveness compared to enzyme sensing assays, E-AB platforms hold significant promise for point-of-care devices and precision medicine. However, sensitivity remains a challenge, particularly in the complicated environment, such as blood and serum. While research has achieved a noise level in the picoampere range, enhancing sensitivity is crucial for detecting trace amounts of certain...

Ya-Chen (Justine) Tsai

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2029 (Anticipated)

Ya-Chen (Justine) Tsai is now a second year PhD student in EECS Department, UC Berkeley. She received her B.S. in National Taiwan University, Department of Electrical Engineering in 2023. Her research interest focuses on CMOS-based microsystems for biosensing, especially the application catered to electrochemical aptamer-based sensing.

BSAC Spring 2024 Research Review Presenter

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Sarika Madhvapathy

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2026 (Anticipated)

Sarika received her B.S. from UC Berkeley in 2020 and her M.S. from UC Berkeley in 2021. She is currently a PhD candidate advised by Prof. Jun-Chau Chien, Prof. Ali Niknejad, and Prof. Vladimir Stojanović. Her research involves using silicon microring resonators as ultrasound sensors in a monolithic electronics-photonics process.

BSAC Fall 2024 Research Review Presenter

Alexander Di

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
B.S. 2025, Ph.D. 2030 (Anticipated)

Nikhil Jain

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2030 (Anticipated)

Wei-Yu Lin

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2029 (Anticipated)

An RFID-inspired One-step Packaged Multi-mode Bio-analyzer with Vacuum Microfluidics for Point-of-Care Diagnostics

Ya-Chen (Justine) Tsai
2025
Spring 2025 BSAC Research Review Presentation View Slides Project: BPNX1004 - Professor Jun-Chau Chien Group

Hamidreza Afzal

Postdoctoral Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
PostDoc 2025 to present

Hamidreza Afzal (Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2015, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, in 2017. He received his Ph.D. degree with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USA in 2024. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include radio frequency (RF), millimeter-wave (mm-wave), and terahertz integrated...

Subtractive Microfluidics in CMOS

Wei-Yang Weng
Alexander Di
Xiang Zhang
Ya-Chen (Justine) Tsai
Yan-Ting Hsiao
Jun-Chau Chien
2024

This paper introduces a microfluidics platform embedded within a silicon chip implemented in CMOS technology. The platform utilizes a one-step wet etching method to create fluidic channels by selectively removing CMOS back-end-of-line (BEOL) routing metals. We term our technique “subtractive” microfluidics, to complement those fabricated with additive manufacturing. Three types of structures are presented in a TSMC I80-nm CMOS chip: (1) passive microfluidics in the form of a micro-mixer and a 1: 64 splitter, (2) fluidic channels with embedded ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs...