Abstract:
This talk will explore the new realm of making miniaturized lab-on-a-chip platforms on unconventional substrates for diverse applications from smart bandages for monitoring and healing chronic wounds, single cell manipulation and analysis, to investigating the gut microbiome in vivo. For example, we 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. I will report on nanomaterial-infused smart threads for sensing physical markers (e.g. strain, pressure, temperature) and biological markers (pH, glucose, lactate etc.). I will showcase our recent work on textile-based dose-controlled drug delivery platform. Functionalized smart threads offer an ultimate platform for flexible bioelectronics as evidenced by our work on sensing sutures and smart bandages for monitoring and healing of chronic wounds. I will then share emerging lab-on-a-CMOS platforms where we demonstrate high throughput dielectrophoretic trapping, lysis and electroporation of single cells directly on CMOS using individually addressable electrodes and built-in circuitry. Finally, I will share some exciting work on making 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.
Biographical Sketch:
Sameer Sonkusale is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University with a joint appointment in the department of Biomedical Engineering. He is currently on sabbatical at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School. At Tufts University, Dr. Sonkusale directs an interdisciplinary research group Nano Lab with research focus on, biomedical microdevices circuits and systems, microfabrication and nanofabrication, Prior to coming to Tufts, he was an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University from 2002 to 2004 and also held the position of visiting associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital for 2011-2012.
Dr. Sonkusale received his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. 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 and the 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.
