Michel M. Maharbiz (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Michel M. Maharbiz

BPN848: Wireless Neural Sensors: Robust Ultrasonic Backscatter Communication in the Brain

David Piech
2021

Brain-machine interfaces provide an artificial conduit to send information to and from the brain, and modulate activity in the brain. These systems have shown great promise in clinical, scientific, and human-computer interaction contexts, but the low reward/risk ratio of today’s invasive neural interfaces has limited their use to an extremely niche clinical patient population. It has been shown that ultrasonic backscatter communication can enable the sensing and stimulation of neural activity with extremely small wireless implants, which can both improve performance and reduce risk....

David Piech

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Michel M. Maharbiz (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2021

David’s research activities focus on neural interface devices and brain-machine interface systems, with the goal of enabling wider adoption of these technologies through vastly reduced-risk in-situ neural recording and stimulation modalities.


Previously, he was a research engineer at a private invention lab and tech incubator where he contributed to research in metamaterials-based antennas (spun out as Echodyne, Inc). In addition, he led and worked on projects in close collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, including a microfluidic tool to aid in malaria...

Kyoungtae Lee

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Michel M. Maharbiz (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2021

Kyoungtae received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2011 and his M.S. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013, where he worked on designing continuous time delta sigma ADCs. He worked at KAIST IT convergence from 2013 to 2016, designing RF modules for future 5G cellular communication. His current research includes ASIC design for implantable bio-sensor, especially for cancer detection.

Electronic Interfaces for Bacteria-Based Biosensing

Tom Zajdel
Michel M. Maharbiz
2018

Bacterial sensing systems have evolved to detect complex biomolecules, operating near fundamental physical limits for biosensing. No modern engineered biosensor has managed to match the efficiency of bacterial systems, which optimize for each sensing application under constraints on response time and sensitivity. An emerging approach to address this short fallis to build biosensors that electronically couple microbes and devices to combine the sensing capabilities of bacteria with the communication and data processing...

Charge Pumping with Human Capacitance for Body Energy Harvesting

Alyssa Y. Zhou
Michel M. Maharbiz
2020

The proliferation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems and human body sensors is rapidly transforming the way we interact with our surroundings. As these devices increase in number and longevity, there grows a critical need to find sustainable and convenient power sources. Shrinking consumer electronics have generated a demand for battery-less power sources forsome applications. Significant interest in studying energy harvesting techniques exists as a solution to power these devices. In particular for interactive...

BPN922: Analog Optical Voltage Sensor

Jordan L. Edmunds
Soner Sonmezoglu
2021

Distributed sensors are becoming ubiquitous in manufacturing, automotive, and consumer applications. One extremely common need at the core of many of these sensors is the requirement to sense small voltages (uV-mV scale), amplify, digitize, and then communicate those bits so they can be acted on. We are taking a different approach - by utilizing nonlinear optical materials, we plan to transduce these signals directly into reflected light, removing the need for complex and high-cost sensor-side circuitry. Since the mechanism is purely passive and does not require a continuous power...

Transparent Micro-electrocorticography (μECoG) Arrays for Optogenetic Mapping of Surface Potentials

Brian Pepin
Michel M. Maharbiz
2013

Electrocorticography (ECoG) has been used for decades clinically to help localize epileptic seizures but has only recently come into vogue as a potentially useful imaging modality. This change has partially been driven by the development of new micro-electrocorticography (µECoG) arrays which take advantage of modern surface micromachining techniques to achieve extremely dense electrode arrays packed with tiny (less than500µm diameter) electrodes. As an imaging tool, µECoG may be improved by taking advantage of the transparent µECoG array technology developed at the University of...

Dosimetry Dust: An Ultrasonic Backscatter Implantable Dosimetry Device

Stefanie Garcia
Michel M. Maharbiz
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2017

Proton beam therapy is a well-established medical procedure for treating certain kinds of cancer, and is uniquely suited for treatment of head, neck, and eye tumors. Despite the continuous improvements in medical physics treatment plan simulations, improper tissue irradiation can easily occur if there is a shift in the tumor and/or critical organs during the irradiation process. A fully implantable dosimeter for in vivo dose measurements can provide closed loop treatment feedback to a physician during radiation treatments, and assist in enabling full irradiation of a tumor. This work...

BPN795: An Implantable Microsensor for Cancer Surveillance

Kyoungtae Lee
2021

We aim to create an implantable dosimeter for the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory’s proton beam therapy treatment. Currently, there is no closed loop solution to verify the dose treated to a specific in vivo location. By using ultrasound as a communication platform, we aim to enable real time in vivo dose readings to physicians. This can lead to better-localized irradiation treatment of cancer, and minimize irradiation to vital, healthy tissues. This technology could also be calibrated for specific military applications.

Project ended: 05/01/2021

BPN894: Acoustically-Driven, Electrically-Controlled Microswimmer

Mauricio J. Bustamante
2021

Underwater self-powered micro-swimmers have several biomedical and environmental applications, such as drug delivery and pathogen elimination in water. Therefore, there is a need for propulsion mechanisms that operate well in the low Reynolds number regimen. We propose a mechanism that uses resonating water-air interfaces to generate underwater propulsion, and electrolysis as a control mechanism. This way, an external field can be used as a power source while control occurs at the device level. It is known that, when actuated by ultrasound waves near its resonance frequency, a bubble...