EE Colloquia: Emerging Smart NanoBioElectronics for Personalized Health

Abstract: Despite significant advancements in engineering, nanotechnology, medicine, biology, and artificial intelligence computing, the integration gap among these disciplines has significantly hampered the efficiency and evolution of medical practices, including patient monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment methods. Addressing these critical bottlenecks is essential for ushering in the era of precision medicine. Our interdisciplinary research endeavors to bridge this gap through the development of innovative, smart, state-of-the-art, cost-effective, scalable, easy-to-use, and accurate nanomaterials-based nano/microbioelectronic devices. These next-generation devices aim to enable advanced prevention, diagnostics, and treatment strategies in precision medicine. Our approach involves developing a new class of smart nano/microbioelectronic devices that are wearable and portable, designed to acquire highly specific information about the body's dynamic health status. These nanomaterials-based devices are designed to be capable of comprehensively and simultaneously assessing time-sequential physiological and molecular profiles through physical sensors for clinically relevant physiological biosignals and electrochemical sensors for detecting a spectrum of clinically relevant biomarkers, including metabolites, electrolytes, nutrients, hormones, and pharmaceuticals, thereby enabling precise and timely feedback. More specifically, our current research focuses on two sub-directions: Firstly, we are developing smart, soft, non-invasive, multi-modal, and flexible nano/microbioelectronic devices. By incorporating functional nanomaterials through emerging manufacturing technologies (e.g., 3D nanomaterials printing), and supported by intelligent computing techniques and smart, wireless, power-efficient electronic systems, these devices facilitate the collection of properly labeled, time-sequential health data. This data will be parsed using big-data computing techniques and in-sensory data analysis methods, providing interactive, real-time feedback. This enables the capture of personalized health baselines and facilitates reliable predictions of health abnormalities. Secondly, we are pioneering the development of 3D in-vivo-mimicking organs and Organ-on-a-Chip devices, integrating them with innovative bioelectronics. This approach aims to enable the interfacing of electronics with organ/tissue models, overcoming the longstanding barriers between inorganic electronics and organic biological systems. By embedding soft electronics into these 3D in-vivo-mimicking models, we aim not only to enhance our understanding of disease mechanisms and drug responses but also to achieve accurate in-vitro disease modeling and therapeutic efficacy assessment through the seamless integration of electronics onto, into, and within these 3D in-vivo-mimicking organ models. This presentation will showcase how our concerted efforts aim to realize these new classes of autonomous wearable and portable devices, techniques, and technologies that are pivotal in enabling the collection of clinically relevant, accurately labeled, and precise large-scale biomarker data from both humans and human-mimicking 3D organ models, marking a significant stride toward the advent of precision medicine and improving patient care and treatment outcomes

Bio: Dr. Esfandyar-Pour obtained both his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, subsequently expanding his expertise through a role as an engineering research scientist at Stanford Medical School. He is currently an Assistant Professor within the departments of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at University of California, Irvine. His interdisciplinary research group's work in Smart NanoBioElectronics seamlessly bridges fundamental research with practical applications in precision medicine. They focus on innovatively addressing crucial bottlenecks to enable precision medicine, with the threefold goal of disease prevention, early diagnosis, and effective treatments. His contributions have been recognized with several awards, and honors including the DARPA Young Faculty Investigator Award in 2023, the Early Career Investigator Award from the International Society for Biofabrication, the ITSA Award, and recognition as one of the 25 Irvine Innovators Making an Impact in 2023, among other accolades. He has authored more than 50 journal and conference papers. Dr. Esfandyarpour's research has also attracted widespread attention from various media outlets, including New Scientist, Nature News, Science Daily, BBC News, NanoMagazine, Azosensor News, Pioneering Minds, HealthTech Insider, Europa Press, and many more.