Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Jun-Chau Chien

Chien Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

BPNX1055: Integration of Nanostructured materials onto CMOS Devices to realize “Lab–on–Chip” Sensors

Michael Pedowitz
2026

Nanostructured materials have become an exciting area of research for the improvement of traditional electronic sensors. The high surface area to volume ratio of nanoflowers, nano-urchins, and nanoporous materials has allowed them to exhibit significant improvements in limit of detection and sensitivity compared to analogous planar sensors. These complex structures have also demonstrated the capability of improving biofouling resistance in complex media by helping to screen fouling agents from the active surface. Despite these advantages, moving this material beyond the laboratory has...

BPNX1042: Subtractive Microfluidics in CMOS

Alexander Di
2025

Integrating microelectronics with microfluidics, especially those implemented in silicon-based CMOS technology, has driven the next generation of in vitro diagnostics. This CMOS/microfluidics platform offers close interfaces between electronics and biological samples and tight integration of readout circuits with multi-channel microfluidics, both of which are crucial factors in achieving enhanced sensitivity and detection throughput. Importantly, conventionally bulky benchtop instruments are now being transformed into millimeter-sized form factors at low cost, making the deployment for...

BPNX1073: Cryogenic CMOS-based Control and Readout of Electrons in Paul Traps (New Project)

Andris Huang
2026

The electron in Paul trap system has been recently proposed as a candidate for qubits in quantum information processing. In such a system, floating electrons are confined in vacuum using oscillating electric fields. Feasibility studies and experimental trapping at room temperature have shown that electrons satisfy all DiVincenzo's criteria, a common standard used to determine whether a system can be a good candidate to perform quantum computation. More importantly, electrons have several advantages in quantum information processing as compared to trapped ions. Electrons are spin-½...

Max Ladabaum

Graduate Student Researcher
Biophysics
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2029 (Anticipated)

Max Ladabaum received his B.S. in Physics from UC Santa Barbara in 2022. After graduation, he worked as a device physicist at Illumina, helping develop new methods to sequence DNA. Max began his PhD in Biophysics at UC Berkeley in 2024 and is coadvised by Prof. Jun-Chau Chien and Prof. Grigory Tikhomirov. Max is interested in pairing DNA nanotechnology with CMOS-based sensors in order to improve signal, specificity, and scale of biosensors.

BPNX1027: Electronic-Photonic Ultrasound Receiver Array for Endoscopic Applications

Sarika Madhvapathy
Ali M. Niknejad
Vladimir Stojanović
2026

Endoscopic ultrasound imaging systems require compact, low-power probes with a dense array of sensing elements. At the same time, the cabling inside the probe tube that interfaces with the external processing unit should be minimal. State-of-the-art ultrasound imagers that utilize CMUTs and PMUTs require integrating each transducer’s power-hungry analog frontend on probe, making it more difficult to satisfy the safe power limit. To address this, we propose the use of silicon microring resonators (MRRs) as ultrasound sensors. Their small element size (10-20 μm in diameter) allows us to...

BPNX1005: Scalable SiPh-based Optical Interconnects for Qubit Control

Wei-Yu Lin
2025

Current quantum processor units (QPUs) have achieved over 1,000 qubits (e.g., IBM's Condor processor). However, scaling quantum platforms toward 1 million qubits demands breakthroughs in quantum hardware, connectivity, error correction, and system architecture. To address the scalability of quantum interconnects, Cryo-CMOS control and readout circuits have demonstrated efficacy in reducing wiring complexity, latency, and thermal loads. However, the CMOS circuits limit the active heat load to 1–2 mW/qubit, imposing a limit of approximately 1,000 qubits in state-of-the-art dilution...

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)

BSAC Fall 2025 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)

Venkata Alapati

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Jun-Chau Chien (Advisor)
M.S. 2025

A 0.7pArms Electrochemical Readout IC for Continuous Monitoring of Antibody Biologics in Upstream Biomanufacturing

Hung-Yu Hou
Ya-Chen (Justine) Tsai
Wei Foo
Yan-Ting Hsiao
Jun-Chau Chien
2025

Biologics are antibodies produced by genetically engineered cells and are widely used in therapeutic applications. Examples include pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and atezolizumab (Tecentriq), both employed in cancer immunotherapy as checkpoint inhibitors to restore T-cell immune responses against tumor cells [1]–[2]. These biologics are produced by engineered cells in bioreactors, followed by extraction, filtration, purification, and separation, before being packaged into drug vials and shipped to hospitals for patient treatment. The production of monoclonal antibodies by cells is highly...