Featuring Spyros Pavlidis | School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State University

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a surge of research and commercial interest in gallium nitride (GaN)-based devices for power conversion applications. This is largely motivated by the wide bandgap of GaN, which offers a unipolar limit of performance that is larger than that of silicon and silicon carbide. While lateral transistors have already been commercially adopted, high power applications require vertical devices to control chip size. Recent improvements in native GaN substrate quality and epitaxy have unlocked the potential of vertical GaN power devices, but effective strategies for selective area doping, in particular p-type doping, remain a major challenge.

In this talk, two vertical devices that rely on selective area doping will be discussed. Firstly, the use of magnesium (Mg) implantation and ultra-high pressure annealing (UHPA) will be explored for the development of GaN junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diodes. Effective crystal repair and carrier activation post implantation via UHPA, which is a capless technique, will be demonstrated. The impact of UHPA on the formation of rectifying contacts will then be investigated, followed by the key demonstration of a 900 V GaN JBS diode with state-of-the-art specific on resistance (RON,sp). The second device that will be studied is the GaN superjunction (SJ) diode. Here, lateral polar junctions (LPJs) are adopted. This approach exploits the natural doping asymmetry between the N-polar and Ga-polar crystal orientations to simultaneously grow N-polar GaN for the n-type pillars and Ga-polar GaN for the p-type pillars, which represents a uniquely different strategy compared to conventional semiconductor technologies. It will be shown that the N-polar GaN camel diode can be used to tune the barrier height and reduce leakage. In this way, the first charge-balanced GaN superjunction device will be demonstrated. All in all, these innovations represent key experimental building blocks for future high-power GaN power devices.

Bio: Spyridon Pavlidis is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University, and the principal investigator for the Laboratory for Electronics in Advanced Devices and Systems (NCSU LEADS). He is affiliated with NCSU’s PowerAmerica, FREEDM and ASSIST Research Centers. He was previously a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Pavlidis received a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech, and an M.Eng in electrical and electronics engineering from Imperial College London. His research interests lie at the intersection of semiconductor devices, novel materials and circuits with applications for high-frequency and power electronics, as well as sensing. He is the recipient of the 2022 NSF CAREER Award, the 2022 Bennett Fellowship, and the 2015 EuMW Young Engineer Prize. He is an active member of the IEEE, serving on several technical program committees, as well as on the IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee on Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Solid State Devices.

Watch a live stream of the seminar here: tinyurl.com/NanoTechLive.

Abstract: TBA

Biography: In addition to her role as chief scientist at the National MagLab, Greene is the MarieKrafft Professor of Physics at Florida State University. Her research is on quantum materials, focusing on fundamental studies utilizing novel materials growth with planar tunneling and point contact electron spectroscopies to elucidate the mechanisms of unconventional superconductivity.

Greene plays an active leadership role in numerous science organizations. In 2017, as president of the American Physical Society (APS), her presidential theme was science diplomacy on national and international scales and its application to human rights. She is currently on the Board of Directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is a vice president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP).

Greene is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a founding member of the Florida Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine. She is also a fellow of the Institute of Physics (U.K.), and AAAS and APS. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and was awarded the E.O. Lawrence Award for Materials Research from the U.S. Department of Energy, the APS Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, the Bellcore Award of Excellence, the Five Sigma Physicist Award for Advocacy in Science Policy from the APS and the Tallahassee Scientific Society Gold Metal. She has co-authored over 200 publications and presented over 600 invited talks.

Registration is Required |  https://tinyurl.com/IMatSympS22

Abstract: Breath testing is a non-invasive and rapid diagnostic tool that is underutilized in the clinic due to scarcity of known breath biomarkers. Thousands of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are excreted from the body in breath after having been produced endogenously as volatile metabolites or introduced exogenously via diet or environmental exposure. However, efforts to identify disease-specific VOCs have been hindered by technological and statistical limitations with currently-used -omic approaches. As an alternative approach to biomarker discovery, my lab has developed a diagnostic platform that leverages aberrant enzymatic activity during disease to engineer synthetic breath biomarkers. This platform technology consists of nanoparticle sensors that are delivered in vivo and release bio-orthogonal VOC reporters upon activation by targeted enzymatic activity. VOC trafficking pathways from tissues to breath offers a mechanism by which we can engineer exhaled biomarkers for diseases of different organ systems. In my talk, I will discuss how we designed and validated our volatile-releasing nanosensors for use in respiratory disease and future applications in gastrointestinal disease.

Bio: Leslie Chan is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Tech School of Engineering and Emory School of Medicine. Chan earned her B.S. in biomedical engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Washington with Professor Suzie Pun. She completed her postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Sangeeta Bhatia and is a recipient of an NIH K99/R00 award. Chan’s research program uses emerging principles from nanomedicine to develop technologies to study, detect, and treat infectious disease, microbiome dysbiosis, and inflammatory diseases. 

Watch a live-stream of the seminar at https://tinyurl.com/NanoTechLive 

Abstract: In this talk, I will present numerous topics in computational materials science, focusing on how the multiscale modeling approach can cooperatively work together to elucidate the structure-property relationship of materials with multiscale characteristics ranging from sub-nanometer to micrometer. In the first part, I will discuss how to computationally scrutinize the electronic, mechanical, and thermodynamic properties of nanomaterials to understand the underpinning mechanisms, particularly in the field of nano-electronics, nano-mechanics, nano-interface, and nano-reactor. In the second part, I will present the applications of the multiscale modeling approach for energy technologies such as battery and fuel cell, in which nanostructures are modeled to predict the properties of interest, namely, ionic transport and redox potential. The bottom line of my talk is that the multiscale modeling approach can help achieve a fundamental understanding of nanoscale systems and establish design guidelines for new material development.

Bio: Seung Soon Jang is a professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University. After working at Samsung Electronics for two years as a senior engineer, he spent six years in Professor Goddard’s group as a postdoctoral associate and research staff at the California Institute of Technology. Jang joined Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 2007, was awarded tenure, and was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and full professor in 2020. His research interest is to investigate various nanoscale systems using multiscale modeling methods to achieve molecular architecture-nanoscale structure-property relationship, which makes fundamental improvements in new material development for various applications. Jang has published 168 peer-reviewed papers (6283 citations, H index: 42). He also has presented 109 invited lectures and 155 contributing presentations at numerous national and international conferences.

A boxed lunch will be served on a first come, first served basis.

Abstract: We are seeking to augment rotator cuff repair and peripheral nerve regeneration by developing biomimetic scaffolds capable of recapitulating the compositional, structural, mechanical, and cellular features of the native tissues. Rotator cuff tears are prevalent in the elderly population. Unfortunately, successful repair remains a major clinical challenge, with high post-operative failure rates. At the root of these failures is the poor healing at the repaired tendon-to-bone insertion, and the lack of regeneration of the native attachment structure. We are developing biomimetic scaffolds to augment the surgical repair and healing of the tendon-to-bone attachment. The research is built around the premise that scaffolds can be designed with hierarchical, functionally-graded structures to match the native enthesis for the regeneration of a robust interface between the reattached tendon and bone. When combined with mesenchymal stem cells, the translational potential of the scaffolds in enhancing the formation of a mechanically functional tendon-to-bone insertion are tested in a clinically relevant rotator cuff injury-and-repair model. Peripheral nerve injury is a large-scale problem that annually affects more than one million people in the US. We are developing nerve guidance conduits based on electrospun fibers for the surgical repair of large defects in thick nerves. The conduit facilitates nerve regeneration across a gap by providing a protective environment, limiting the possible directions of axonal sprouting, concentrating neurotrophic factors, and offering physical guidance to neurite extension. Specifically, we are working with conduits featuring a multi-tubular design to recapitulate the fascicles typical of a peripheral nerve while providing good mechanical strength to resist kinking and distortion during surgery. We augment nerve regeneration by leveraging the physical cue arising from the uniaxial alignment of electrospun fibers and nanoscale grooves engraved in the surface of the fibers, in addition to the biological cues provided by Schwann cells and/or encapsulated neurotrophic factors. A combination of in vitro and in vivo models are used to optimize the design and parameters of the conduits for peripheral nerve repair and functional recovery.

Bio: Younan Xia is the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a B.S. degree in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, a M.S. degree in inorganic chemistry from University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from Harvard University. He started as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington in 1997 and was promoted to Associate Professor and Full Professor in 2002 and 2004, respectively. He joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 as the James M. McKelvey Professor and then moved to Georgia Tech in 2012, holding joint appointments in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His group has invented a myriad of nanomaterials with controlled properties for widespread use in applications related to plasmonics, electronics, photonics, photovoltaics, display, catalysis, energy conversion, nanomedicine, and regenerative medicine. Xia has co-authored more than 830 publications in peer-reviewed journals, with a total citations of over 176,000 and an h-index of 208. He has been named a Top 10 Chemist and Materials Scientist based on the number of citations per publication. He has received a number of prestigious awards, including Materials Research Society Medal (2017), American Chemical Society National Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2013), NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2006), David and Lucile Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering (2000), and NSF CAREER Award (2000).

Abstract: The current COVID-19 pandemic and other recent outbreaks such as Ebola, MERS, SARS, and H1N1 have underscored the need for early detection and continued surveillance of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. The heterogeneity of disease in COVID-19 – a large number of mild or asymptomatic cases coupled with the relatively rapid degradation in symptoms in some patients – poses a unique challenge for the healthcare system and emphasizes the need for developing predictive biomarkers of disease severity. We are harnessing microscale and nanoscale technology to solve these challenges by developing devices for high-throughput discovery and inexpensive electronic detection of diagnostic & prognostic biomarkers. Here, I will present our progress with these approaches in the context of COVID-19 and beyond.

Bio: Aniruddh Sarkar is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University where he leads the Micro/Nano Bioelectronics Lab. His research has evolved around the theme of exploiting unique physical phenomena that occur at the micrometer to nanometer length scales to develop devices and systems for solving various technological problems with a special focus on applications in biology and medicine. This includes the development and application of microfabricated and nanofabricated devices for the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and Tuberculosis. He was earlier a Research Fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard with research affiliations at Harvard Medical School and at MIT. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science with a minor in biology at MIT, developing microfluidic tools for single-cell analysis. He received his bachelors and master’s degrees, both in electrical engineering at IIT Bombay.

Abstract: This talk will review several recent advances in utilizing cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) in commodity materials applications. The talk will focus on developments relevant to the coatings industry, particularly waterborne coatings utilized in latex paints as well as those useful as barrier coatings for packaging materials. Waterborne acrylic latexes are found in a large variety of commercial coating and paint products, but most of these products continue to contain volatile organic solvents (VOCs). I will present recent work that demonstrates who CNCs can be used as additives to waterborne acrylic formulations to displace the use of VOCs. Notably, because CNCs enable the development of hardness in otherwise soft acrylics, the VOC is no longer needed to enable film formation during the early drying stage. We have investigated two modes of addition of CNC: addition direct to the aqueous phase after the latex is produced and addition to the monomer phase prior to polymerization. In the latter case, the latex is then produced after CNC is dispersed in monomer droplets, by miniemulsion polymerization. This presentation will also feature research on the utilization of CNC dispersions as coatings on conventional polymer films such as PET and cellulose acetate, in order to impart high oxygen barrier properties to these films.

Bio:  Carson Meredith received a B.S. in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech (1993) and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Texas, Austin (1998). He was a postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1998 - 2000 and joined the faculty in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2000. His research interests are the application of colloid and polymer science principles to biomass-derived renewable and sustainable materials and efficient processing of biomass. His group has pioneered in the area of using chitin and cellulose to derive alternative packaging materials as substitutes for plastics. He is the Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute, one of 10 interdisciplinary research institutes on the campus. In this role, he is catalyzing an interdisciplinary innovation community engaged in translational research in pulp, paper and packaging, circular materials from biomass, and bioindustrial manufacturing and biorefining. Meredith was Chief Editor for the journal Emergent Materials (Springer, 2018-2021).

Abstract: A wide range of inorganic nanoparticles have been made and tested for bio-applications. Yet, nanoparticles made of alkali halides have been rarely studied. The underlying assumption is that electrolyte nanoparticles will quickly dissolve in water and behave similarly as their constituent salts. Our recent studies challenge this preconception. For instance, we found that NaCl nanoparticles (SCNPs) but not salts are toxic to cancer cells. This is because SCNPs enter cells through endocytosis, bypassing cell regulations on ion transport. When dissolved inside cancer cells, SCNPs break the osmotic balance, causing cancer cell death. Another example is CsI(Na) nanoparticles. CsI(Na) nanoparticles produce ~410 nm luminescence under X-ray radiation. The X-ray luminescence can in turn activate a photosensitizer such as protoporphyrin IX (PpIX), a phenomenon known as X-ray induced photodynamic therapy (X-PDT). PpIX accumulates in the mitochondria of cancer cells that have been treated with 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA). Our studies show that combining CsI(Na) nanoparticles and 5-ALA can sensitize cancer cells to radiation therapy (RT) due to synergy between mitochondria-targeted X-PDT and DNA-targeted RT. For both SCNPs or CsI(Na) nanoparticles, the nanomaterials are dissolved to alkali metal ions and halides, which are safely excreted after treatment. Overall, alkali metal nanoparticles represent a novel type of nanomaterials that hold potential in cancer therapy and other bio-applications.

Bio: Jin Xie is currently an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia (UGA). Xie also holds an adjunct associate professor position at the UGA School of Chemical, Materials, and Biomedical Engineering. Xie obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Brown University in 2008. He worked as a postdoc in the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford University (2008-2009). He then moved to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) as a research fellow. In 2011, he joined the faculty of UGA Chemistry as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2017. His research interests include nanoparticle-based drug delivery, radiotherapy, and photodynamic therapy. He serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Nanobiotechnology. He has received a number of awards, including the NSF Career Award, NIH Pathway to Independence Award, Young Innovator Award in Nanobiotechnology by Nano Research, and the NIBIB Outstanding Researcher Award. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in the fields of nanomedicine, drug delivery, and imaging.

Watch a live-stream of the seminar at tinyurl.com/NanoTechLive 

Bio: Kristen Kulinowski is the director of IDA’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center. In this capacity, she leads more than 40 researchers providing analysis of national and international science and technology issues for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation, among others. In the first decade of the 21st century, Kulinowski was a senior faculty fellow in chemistry at Rice University and served as the executive director for the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) and the director of the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). Much of her work at Rice focused on bringing together diverse stakeholders to explore and communicate the potential risks of engineered nanomaterials. Kulinowski attained a bachelor’s degree with honors in chemistry from Canisius College. She earned master’s and doctorate degrees in chemistry from the University of Rochester.

Attend the virtual event: https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/live-event/qxsujvck

Prof. W. Alan Doolittle; School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: Epitaxial processes are considered routine for applications spanning established industries from the silicon and GaN semiconductor industries to cutting edge research.  As many as 10,000 epitaxial reactors crank out billions of dollars’ worth of light emitting diode chips for solid state white lighting alone. Those metrics increase 100-fold for silicon applications.  Epitaxy is core to countless industries but is mostly performed in ways that have not changed for decades.  But epitaxy can also be performed in non-standard ways to overcome “perceived” barriers to materials synthesis. Several examples will be given in this talk including: 1) Dynamic control of surface chemistry so as to enable higher solubility of desirable impurities; 2) Dynamic control of surface energy facilitating 3D control of alloy composition and material properties; 3) Electrothermal control of epitaxy to enable metastable phase materials; and 4) the “invention” of the widest semiconductor known.  Each of these example problems has been solved by a common “thought process” wherein the fundamental assumption behind the limitation was defined and ways of violating the identified assumption was explored leading to new functionality in materials. The importance of the process – assumption identification and violation – will be discussed in hopes of conveying an important approach to solving hard problems. New emerging industries such as optoelectronics, neuromorphic computing and power electronics will be highlighted as beneficiaries of these unique approaches.

Bio: Dr. W. Alan Doolittle is the Joseph M. Pettit professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Doolittle is a proud, two-time Georgia Tech alumnus, earning his B.E.E. degree with highest honors in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1996. Doolittle leads the Advanced Semiconductor Technology Facility with an estimated equipment capitalization of $8 million and works in the areas of microelectronic fabrication, materials growth, materials and device characterization, neuromorphic computational devices, power devices, high frequency transistors and optoelectronic devices. Doolittle pioneered the area of hyper doping of wide bandgap semiconductors which has enabled the creation of new semiconductors including the widest bandgap semiconductor known, new devices that utilize quantum mechanical processes to reduce power losses and to allow new ways of interconnecting advanced power and optoelectronic devices. Doolittle has also pioneered the synthesis of lithium-metal-oxides which have recently gained attraction for very low power neuromorphic devices– devices that emulate human brain functionality.

Abstract: During the last 30 years the evolutionary improvements in lithium-ion battery (LIB) technologies increased LIB volumetric and gravimetric energy densities by over 3 times and reduced cell price by up to 50 times. As a result, LIBs mostly replaced other rechargeable battery technologies for most portable applications. To accelerate the transition to renewable energy economy and electric transportation the cost of LIBs should be reduced rapidly and drastically, from the current $100-200 kWh^-1 to below $50 kWh^-1. This can become feasible if traditional intercalation-type active electrode materials in LIB construction are replaced with low-cost, broadly available, high-capacity conversion-type active materials. Unfortunately, conversion active materials suffer from multiple limitations, such as large volume changes, low conductivity, and unfavorable interactions with liquid electrolytes, commonly leading to low attainable energy density, significant impedance growth, rapid capacity decay and premature cell failure. In my invited talk I will discuss the key materials’ challenges and provide examples to overcome these. For industrial applications, synthesis methods need to additionally be inexpensive at scale and rely on the use of low-cost, broadly available precursors. Finally, it is important that novel materials remain fully compatible with currently operating and planned LIB factories to enable their successful commercialization.

Bio: Gleb Yushin is a Professor and Mifflin Hood Chair in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an Editor-in-Chief of Materials Today, the flagship journal of the Materials Today family (150+ journals) dedicated to covering the most innovative, cutting edge and influential work of broad interest to the materials science community. Prof. Yushin is also a co-founder and CTO of a Georgia Tech startup Sila Nanotechnologies, Inc., an advanced battery materials company currently employing nearly 300 people and valued at over $3B. Prof. Yushin pioneered transformative developments of advanced materials for next generation rechargeable batteries for clean energy and transportation. Prof. Yushin was selected to become a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Research Innovation Award by Georgia Tech (2019), was a finalist and Honoree of the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists by the New York Academy of Sciences (2017, 2018), is distinguished as one of the “Leading and Most Cited Researchers in Sciences Around the World” by Clarivate Analytics  (2017-2021), and was elected to the Hall of Fame of his alma mater (NCSU, College of Engineering, MSE, 2018). Prof. Yushin is a Fellow of the EU Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, the Materials Research Society, and The Electrochemical Society. Prof. Yushin holds over 140 US and international patents and patent applications, has given over 140 invited and keynote presentations, and has published over 160 highly impactful papers that have been cited over 35,000 times.

Abstract: Nano and microtechnologies have a big potential to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of diseases. In this seminar, I will highlight three examples that may be unusual to the audience. (1) ThromboCheck has been developed from the Atlanta Center for Microengineering for Point of Care Technologies (ACME-POCT). We converted a complex system to recreate heart attacks from the flow of whole blood using microfluidics into a simple POC device that can be run by the phlebotomist to yield clinically relevant info within 5 minutes. (2) Nanoparticles have been suggested for drug delivery systems. However, we have recently found that the nanoparticles themselves may have therapeutic value in preventing heart attacks as a novel therapy. These nanoparticles act by physics so have a device instead of pharmaceutical regulatory pathway with potential $1 bn savings in development cost. (3) Lastly, new microPCR techniques have been used for diagnosing COVID-19. The next pathogen ripe for POC development should be other respiratory diseases such as TB that is the number one killer of children around the world.  A novel sampling technique may allow better surveillance and adoption than sputum or nasal swabs while providing more information on who need not be quarantined.

Bio: David Ku is a Regents’ Professor of Mechanical Engineering and holds the Huang Chair Professorship for Engineering Entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech and is also Professor of Surgery at Emory University. His primary research is in the area of how blood clots to create heart attacks and strokes. This work may also identify people who are at risk for severe bleeding such as with trauma and postpartum hemorrhage. This work is funded by NIH, NSF, and FDA. He has commercialized several medical technologies including knee cartilage prostheses and venous valves with two companies reaching over $400 million in market capitalization. Dr. Ku also teaches entrepreneurship at Scheller College of Business.

Bio: Dr. Matthew Putman is an American scientist, educator, musician, and film/stage producer. He is best known for his work in nanotechnology. Putman currently serves as the CEO of Nanotronics, an advanced machines and intelligence company that has redefined factory control through the invention of a platform that combines AI, automation, and sophisticated imaging to assist human ingenuity in detecting flaws in manufacturing. The new Nanotronics headquarters serves as New York’s first high-tech manufacturing hub and is located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Who Should Attend:

This seminar is for scientists, researchers, facility managers, industrial managers and engineers who are engaged in research in nanotechnology, semiconductors, materials science, MEMS, and bio-technology.

Abstract:  Today, nearly every aspect of an integrated circuit is designed using electronic design automation (EDA) software. Technology computer aided design (TCAD) tools are used for modeling front-end-of-line manufacturing, including the fabrication (Process TCAD) and electrical characterization (Device TCAD) of individual transistors. These tools have been utilized over the last six decades to help realize Moore’s law scaling – the driver behind the exponential increase in transistor density – alleviating the high cost of expensive fabrication experiments. The development of each logic node has, in turn, driven the development of the TCAD tools to account for new fabrication and manufacturing techniques.

The basic fabrication steps in building a full transistor with Sentaurus Process TCAD are ion implantation, diffusion and dopant activation, etching, deposition, and oxidation where process conditions such as the ambient chemical composition, temperature, and pressure during individual fabrication steps are typically included. While these basic steps exist in some form in each new technology node, how they are realized changes, for example the development of 3D oxidation models for FinFETs. In addition, as traditional scaling comes to an end, system level design considerations, such as back-end-of-line parasitic capacitance and resistance need to be accounted for opening up new processing techniques such as Atomic Layer Deposition and Etching (ALD/E).

In this talk, I will discuss how Process TCAD has evolved to keep up with technology evolution and how new drivers in electronics applications, such as 5G, IoT, and autonomous vehicles are driving the next generation process TCAD tools.

Bio: Shela Aboud is a Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Synopsys. She has a Ph.D. in EE from Arizona State University and more than 20 years of experience in TCAD tool development, applications support, and product marketing, including 7 years at Synopsys in the TCAD group. Shela is also the author of more than 100 peer reviewed publications and presentations at internationally renowned conferences and workshops

Abstract: It is obviously important and even crucial that the founders of a new start-up company thoroughly understand the technology and the market for their products, as well as how their products will be manufactured, and the supply chain associated with manufacturing. It may not be immediately obvious, however, that the founders also need to thoroughly understand what their potential investors are looking for. Clearly, investors are looking for a return on their investment, but in order to improve their chances of getting a return, there are many features of the new company and the team which investors closely and carefully scrutinize. This talk will focus on what those features are. What aspects of your company do investors consider crucial and which aspects will increase your potential for securing funding? Also, there are several types of investors, individual angels, angel groups, strategic corporate investors, and venture capitalists. Each of these groups have different motivations and agendas which drive their decisions. When founders genuinely comprehend what investors like to see in their portfolio companies, they will not only find it easier to obtain funding, but their chances of being commercially successful will also be enhanced.

Bio: Kurt Petersen received his BS degree cum laude in EE from UC Berkeley in 1970 and a PhD in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975.  Dr. Petersen established a micromachining research group at IBM from 1975 to 1982, publishing the most frequently referenced work in the field of micromachining and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Since 1982, Dr. Petersen has co-founded six companies in MEMS technology. In 2011, he joined the Silicon Valley Band of Angels, where he now co-chairs the HardTech group. The Band is an angel investment group which mentors and invests in early stage, high-tech, start-up companies. Dr. Petersen has published over 100 papers and has been granted over 35 patents in the field of MEMS.  He was awarded the prestigious IEEE Medal of Honor in 2019 as well as the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal in 2001 for his contributions to MEMS.  Dr. Petersen is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Life Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of his contributions to “the commercialization of MEMS technology”.

Access the Lecture at: https://tinyurl.com/NNCIinnovateNANO

Abstract: Societal grand challenges identified across the globe such as harvesting solar energy, advancing human health and wellness, minimizing carbon footprint, improving food safety and security, demand continuous improvements in the current technologies to push boundaries as well as require the development of completely new technologies. Addressing the above societal problems through non-traditional research approaches could open up new opportunities for the advancement of science and technology. This seminar will provide an overview of the research in the Nano Electrochemistry Laboratory at the University of Georgia in areas of solar energy conversion, energy storage, medical diagnostics, bioremediation, agricultural and food safety technologies using non-traditional electrochemical engineering. For example, the natural functions of redox enzymes and/or cells could be manipulated or modified through electrochemistry for a specific end-application such a biosensor, fuel cell or bio-solar cell. Similarly, the native metabolism of a microorganism could be manipulated for fuel or energy production in an electrochemical cell. The natural photosynthetic process in photosynthetic machineries could be genetically engineered for electricity generation in a biological solar cell. Also, the material issues plaguing the energy storage technologies, could be addressed by nanoscale science and engineering. The talk will introduce how electrochemistry, chemical engineering, material science, biology and nanotechnology could complement each other in addressing the societal grand challenges.

Bio: Dr. Ramaraja Ramasamy is a Professor of Biochemical Engineering and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. His research interest lies in non-traditional electrochemical engineering applied to biosensors, bio-solar cells, batteries, fuel cells and related systems. He has published over 180 journal and conference papers, delivered over 30 invited talks and has filed 10 patents. He has been awarded over $3M in research and educational grants for his work at UGA. His research currently has 7 graduate students. He is a member of the Electrochemical Society and the Institute of Biological Engineering.

Abstract: High-throughput fabrication techniques for generating arbitrarily complex three-dimensional structures with nanoscale features are desirable across a broad range of applications including healthcare, transportation, and computing. Two-photon lithography (TPL) is a promising additive manufacturing (AM) technique that relies on nonlinear light absorption to fabricate complex 3D structures with polymeric nanoscale features. However, the serial point-by-point writing scheme of TPL is too slow for many applications. We have developed a high-throughput nanoscale AM technique based on parallelization of TPL. Our technique has increased the processing rate by a thousand times while preserving the nanoscale feature sizes. It relies on simultaneous spatial and temporal focusing of an ultrafast laser to implement projection-based layer-by-layer printing. The first part of this talk will focus on how we broke the traditional tradeoff between rate and feature size – a tradeoff that had persisted in the field for more than two decades and was considered unbreakable. The second part will focus on how one may expand the material palette to 3D print various polymeric, metallic, and ceramic structures on the nanoscale.

Bio: Sourabh Saha is an Assistant Professor in the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has previously worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a research staff. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2014. His research interest lies in scaling up advanced manufacturing processes, especially for generation of complex micro and nanoscale 3D structures. He received the NSF CAREER award and the SME Geoff Boothroyd Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer award in 2021.

Abstract: Spheroids and organoids are self-organized, three-dimensional cell aggregates that have recently become an invaluable tool for researchers due to their enhanced capacity to mimic in vivo morphology. However, due to their lack of angiogenesis, as they grow beyond ~500 μm in diameter, nutrients and oxygen are unable to penetrate into the central region. Thus, a necrotic core forms within mature spheroids & organoids. This central core of dead cells caused by a lack of vascularization / perfusion inhibits true replication of in vivo systems and prevents reliable, uniform, and repeatable cultivation of organoids. In microfluidic devices, carefully controlled dynamic flow and pressure conditions can improve nutrient delivery and fluid penetration into spheroids, thereby reducing the prevalence of the necrotic core, augmenting the efficacy of drug/particle intake, and increasing differentiation uniformity in organoids generated from pluripotent stem cells. In this talk, I will present the effects of varied flow conditions on fluid penetration depth in HEK293 spheroids. A microfluidic channel is utilized to expose developing spheroids to an oscillatory flow pattern. Alexa Fluor 594 is used to quantify the fluid penetration of cell culture media into the spheroids. Additionally, genetically modified HEK spheroids which express fluorescent proteins in the presence of doxycycline are assessed to quantify the penetration depth of drug delivery into the spheroid. The results show a promising trend of improving penetration of nutrient and drug delivery into the spheroids. These results will go on to inform long-term studies that use microfluidics to not only enhance spheroid growth and particle delivery, but also to improve differentiation uniformity and reliability in organoid models. By optimizing microfluidics in spheroid and organoid culture protocols, these “organon-a-chip” devices will advance groundbreaking biological and medical research.

Bio: Dr. Chengzhi Shi is an Assistant Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a program faculty of Bioengineering, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, and Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Before joining Georgia Tech, Dr. Shi earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 and his M.S. and B.S. degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2013 and 2010. His research interests include physical acoustics, wave propagation, metamaterials, ultrasound imaging, and therapeutic ultrasound. He has published many highly cited papers in prestigious journals including Science, PNAS, and Nature Communications. Dr. Shi’s research is supported by the National Science Foundation.

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Abstract: Microvascular dysfunction is associated with the pathophysiology of many diseases, such as sickle cell disease. However, due to the small size scale and its location deep inside the tissues, the pathological events that occur in the microvasculature are commonly invisible under the clinical settings and difficult to study using animal models as well. Therefore, the underlying mechanisms of microvascular dysfunction in disease are poorly understood. To address this challenge, we are developing novel hydrogel-based microvasculature-on-chips by harnessing microfabrication and material science to model microvasculature with long-term physiologically relevant properties, which allows us to recapitulate and monitor the pathological events of microvascular dysfunction in disease with high resolution. Here I will present the development of the hydrogel-based microvasculature-on-chip system and our recent progress in using this novel system to study the microvascular occlusion and test the therapeutics in sickle cell disease.

Bio: Yongzhi Qiu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine where he works in Dr. Wilbur Lam’s Lab. He joined Dr. Lam’s lab in 2012 as a postdoctoral fellow where he received training in experimental hematology. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2020. His research has been focused on investigating platelet mechanics in hematological diseases and developing microvasculature-on-chip technologies for advancing research in the field of hematology. Before joining Dr. Wilbur Lam’s Lab, he worked with Dr. Johnna Temenoff at Georgia Tech as a postdoctoral fellow where he obtained training in tendon/ligament tissue engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering at Clemson University. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in Polymer Science and Engineering at Nanjing University, China.

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Abstract: There is a clear need to develop more realistic in vitro brain models that simulate brain activities, mechanical environment, and complex physiological responses. This presentation reports on development of a brain microphysiological system (BMPS) that mimics the neurovascular-immune-neuronal environment in brain. This effort to develop better in vitro brain models includes brain organoids development, vascularization, microfluidic-based brain on a chip, iPSC-derived differentiation, physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling model, and extracellular materials. As an example, use of this platform, toxicity screening for organophosphates (OPs) will be presented. We evaluated four OPs for concentration-dependent effects on: 1) overall cell viability/toxicity within the construct, 2) penetration of OPs across the model blood brain barrier (BBB), 3) inhibition of AChE activity in target cells following exposure, and 4) residual OP in endothelial vascular compartment.

Bio: Dr. Yun is the Professor of Chemical, Biological and BioEngineering and Graduate Coordinator of BioEngineering Program at North Carolina A&T State University. He was earlier a research professor at University of Cincinnati. His team investigates stem cell differentiation, brain organoid, vascularization, extracellular matrix (ECM), and microfabrication/microfluidic technology to construct brain tissue to model neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer Disease, and to screen clinically relevant drug or chemical agents such as organophosphate nerve agent. Dr. Yun lab also works on T cell dynamics on antigen presenting cells (APCs) for immunotherapy. Dr. Yun holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and further worked as a post-doc and research professor at University of Cincinnati. He received his bachelors and master’s degree at Chonbuk National University, South Korea.

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Abstract: Studying brain development is important for our understanding of brain function and dysfunctions such as developmental neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders. A major difficulty lies in the lack of human-specific model systems to proceed with large-scale studies. Traditional assays using 2D cell cultures lack the 3D structure and associated functionality, while small animal model organisms are not human-specific. Brain organoids appear as an attractive solution as they are physiologically relevant systems that can be produced in large numbers. However, the current methods show challenges in producing homogeneous organoids suitable for large-scale screens. We will show how in the Lu lab, based on our experience in designing high-throughput screening techniques, we are developing methods that specifically target the unique challenges of culturing and monitoring brain organoids. We envision these techniques to find important applications for disease modeling and drug screens.

Bio: Guillaume Aubry obtained his M.S. in Optoelectronics and Ph.D. in Physics at the Paris-Sud University, now Paris-Saclay University, France. His Ph.D. focused on developing liquid-state optical microresonators for lab-on-chip biosensing applications. After graduation, he moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology to work with Dr. Hang Lu and created droplet-based microfluidic screening platforms for C. elegans model organism. He is currently a Research Scientist in the Lu lab at Georgia Tech where he pursues the development of high-throughput screening techniques for single cells and multi-cellular organisms.

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Abstract: While polarons --- charges bound to a lattice deformation induced by electron-phonon coupling --- are primary photoexcitations at room temperature in bulk metal-halide hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIP), excitons --- Coulomb-bound electron-hole pairs --- are the stable quasi-particles in their two-dimensional (2D) analogues. Here we address the fundamental question: are polaronic effects consequential for excitons in 2D-HIOPs? Based on our recent work, we argue that polaronic effects are manifested intrinsically in the exciton spectral structure, which is comprised of multiple non-degenerate resonances with constant inter-peak energy spacing. We highlight measurements of population and dephasing dynamics that point to the apparently deterministic role of polaronic effects in excitonic properties. We contend that an interplay of long-range and short-range exciton-lattice couplings give rise to exciton polarons, a character that fundamentally establishes their effective mass and radius, and consequently, their quantum dynamics.  Given this complexity, a fundamentally far-reaching issue is how Coulomb-mediated many-body interactions---elastic scattering such as excitation-induced dephasing, inelastic exciton bimolecular scattering, and multi-exciton binding---depend upon the specific exciton-lattice coupling within the structured excitation lineshape. We measure the intrinsic and density-dependent exciton dephasing rates of the multiple excitons and their dependence on temperature by means of two-dimensional coherent excitation spectroscopy. We find that diverse excitons display distinct intrinsic dephasing rates mediated by phonon scattering involving different effective phonons, and contrasting rates of exciton-exciton elastic scattering. These findings establish specifically the consequence of distinct lattice dressing on exciton many-body quantum dynamics, which critically define fundamental optical properties that underpin photonics and quantum optoelectronics.

Bio: Carlos Silva earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Minnesota in 1998 and was then a Postdoctoral Associate in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. In 2001 he became an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow in the Cavendish Laboratory, and Research Fellow in Darwin College, Cambridge. In 2005, he joined the Université de Montréal as an Assistant Professor, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Organic Semiconductor Materials from 2005 to 2015 and a Université de Montréal Research Chair from 2014 to 2017. He joined Georgia Tech in 2017, where he is currently Professor with joint appointment in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Physics, and Professor by Courtesy Appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He is also Honorary Professor in the Department of Applied Physics of the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV Unidad Merida). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. His group focuses on optical and electronic properties of organic and hybrid semiconductor materials, mainly probed by nonlinear ultrafast spectroscopies.

Abstract: The tremendous downsizing desired for the next generations of electronic structures involves stress levels previously unheard of, requiring to tailor specific insulating technologies and materials. Setting up all-electric aircraft needs embedding more and more electrical power in aeronautics, requiring higher voltages, with considerable consequences on the insulators, considering the specific environment of aircrafts (low pressure, humidity, thermal gradient). Developing high voltage direct current networks, needed to collect energy from remote and off-shore farms and to reinforce interconnexions, lead to questioning the effects of high dc voltages on insulators. Above that, the environmental regulations push to reinvent manufacturing processes and products.

This talk comes at a time when insulating materials are increasingly mastered and when new possibilities of design (functionalization, nano-composites,) are being widely deployed. Higher constraints can be now imposed and approaching the intrinsic limits of insulators is sometimes at reach, but the challenges for the future are only increasing.  In this talk, I will describe the features and use of insulating materials in electronic and electrical engineering devices, with a focus on their current and potential applications. The presentation is aimed toward electrical and electronic engineers and students, who do not need a background in the field, and will provide an insight into the fundamentals of insulating materials, electrical properties and characterization, insulation design, reliability issues, limitations, recent advances, challenges ahead and potential solutions.

Bio: Petru Notingher was born in Romania, in 1971. He received an M. Sc. from the “Politehnica” University of Bucharest in 1995, the M.Sc. degree from Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse (France) in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Montpellier (France) in 2000, all in Electrical Engineering. After completing the Ph.D. degree, he worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant with the Universities of Montpellier and Toulouse. In 2003, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the University of Montpellier and promoted to Full Professor in 2012. Since 2003, he has been with the “Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes” (University of Montpellier/CNRS), where he was the head of the “Energy Systems, Reliability and Radiation” research department between 2012 and 2020. He is currently the Deputy Director of the IES. His research concerns insulating materials, electric charge measurement and electrostatic phenomena. He has authored and co-authored 175 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings and several book chapters. He served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications and IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation.

Abstract: Engineered photonic nanostructures offer the exciting potential to create customized nonlinear optical media with tailored high-order effects, which are essential to the active control of light and the generation of new spectral components. Leveraging the electrical and optical functions simultaneously supported in certain nanophotonic systems, we can realize externally triggered and dynamically controllable light-matter interactions for nonlinear optical generation and signal processing. In particular, we harness the transient disruption of the inversion symmetry for second-order optical processes, and facilitate the hot-carrier-induced perturbation of the dielectric permittivity for all-optical control of light. Such effects are exploited in a variety of nanophotonic platforms, including plasmonic structures, dielectric metasurfaces, and two-dimensional crystals. Our studies reveal a grand opportunity to exploit photonic nanostructures as self-contained platforms with intrinsically embedded electrical functionality and optical nonlinearity, and conversely, to elucidate the dynamics of carrier generation and transport via nonlinear optical means.

Bio: Wenshan Cai is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a joint appointment in Materials Science and Engineering. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2012, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Dr. Cai received his B.S. and M.S. from Tsinghua University in 2000 and 2002, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2008. His research is focused on nanophotonic materials and devices, in which he has made major impacts on the evolving field of plasmonics and metamaterials. Dr. Cai has published ~70 journal articles, which in total have been cited ~19,000 times. He authored the book, Optical Metamaterials: Fundamentals and Applications, which is used as a textbook or a major reference around the world. Dr. Cai is the recipient of several distinctions, including the OSA/SPIE Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.

Abstract: Breath testing is a non-invasive and rapid diagnostic tool that is underutilized in the clinic due to scarcity of known breath biomarkers. Thousands of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are excreted from the body in breath after having been produced endogenously as volatile metabolites or introduced exogenously via diet or environmental exposure. However, efforts to identify disease-specific VOCs have been hindered by technological and statistical limitations with currently-used -omic approaches. As an alternative approach to biomarker discovery, my lab has developed a diagnostic platform that leverages aberrant enzymatic activity during disease to engineer synthetic breath biomarkers. This platform technology consists of nanoparticle sensors that are delivered in vivo and release bio-orthogonal VOC reporters upon activation by targeted enzymatic activity. VOC trafficking pathways from tissues to breath offers a mechanism by which we can engineer exhaled biomarkers for diseases of different organ systems. In my talk, I will discuss how we designed and validated our volatile-releasing nanosensors for use in respiratory disease and future applications in gastrointestinal disease.   

Bio: Dr. Leslie Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Tech School of Engineering and Emory School of Medicine. Dr. Chan earned her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington with Professor Suzie Pun. She completed her postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Sangeeta Bhatia and is a recipient of an NIH K99/R00 award. Dr. Chan’s research program uses emerging principles from nanomedicine to develop technologies to study, detect, and treat infectious disease, microbiome dysbiosis, and inflammatory diseases. 

Watch a live-stream of the seminar here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiKUEBgNIqHkwtEqN3xpjNw/featured

Abstract: Microsystems and nanosystems technologies are becoming, if not already, pervasive throughout the daily human experience. The internet of things is expected to support a trillion micro-nano devices. Examples of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) include pressure sensors, microphones, accelerometers, time-keeping devices, photonic devices, and medical instrumentation. The growth and convergence of these technologies will expand for the foreseeable future as the miniaturization and integration processes continues. A modern hi-tech workforce will be educated by Micro Nano Technology educators to keep pace with these manufacturing developments.

The Micro Nano Technology Education Center (MNT-EC) is a community college led conglomerate of educators, industry leaders, and government agencies that aim to increase micro nano technical education opportunities. The goal of the MNT-EC is to grow the MNT technician workforce by fostering academic and industry mentorship between existing MNT partners and educators developing prospective community college MNT programs. This goal will be accomplished by coordinating programs, engaging with industry partners, increasing the diversity in MNT education and workforce, and providing professional development opportunities for MNT faculty and students. This presentation will discuss the current state of MNT technical education and share the Center goals.

Bio: Jared Ashcroft is a Chemistry professor at Pasadena City College and the Center Director for the NSF-supported Micro Nano Technology Education Center (micronanoeducation.org), actively involved in bringing MNT technical education programs to community colleges. He earned his BS in Chemistry from Long Beach State and Doctorate in Chemistry from Rice University. His doctorate work and subsequent studies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab focused on nano-based medical diagnostics and therapeutics. His current undergraduate research group focuses on using active learning in conjunction with remote instrumentation to increase success and engagement in science.

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Bio: David Berube is Professor of Science and Technology Communication, North Carolina State University and Director of Assessment & Societal and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology for the Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network. Beginning in 2004, he was Research Director and Coordinator of Industrial and Government Relations of the University of South Carolina NanoCenter and has been involved in nano and society ever since, including serving as the director of communication for the International Council on Nanotechnology.

Bio: Andrew Maynard is an Associate Dean & Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. After completing a PhD on aerosol particle physics, he began to focus more and more on issues of safety, policy, and society and by 2005 was Chief Science Advisor at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

Bio: Jameson Wetmore is Associate Director for SEI at the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Coordinating Office and Deputy Director of Nanotechnology Collaborative Infrastructure Southwest. He began working on nanotechnology as part of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU in 2006.

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Abstract: Quantum computing offers the potential for an exponential speed-up of certain classes of computational problems, and, as such, the development of a practical quantum computer has been a field of intense research over the past two decades. Yet, it is still early in the development of these systems, as we have just reached the point at which laboratory experiments have shown that quantum computers can outperform classical computers at certain computational tasks. As such, it is an exciting time in the field, analogous to the early days of classical computer development. As microwave engineers there is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to the field, since the control and measurement of most quantum processors is carried-out using microwave techniques. In this talk, I will describe the use of microwaves in quantum computing, with a focus on the superconducting qubit technology which was used to show that a quantum computer is capable of post-classical computation. The talk will be geared toward microwave engineers who may have no background in quantum computing, and it will provide a glimpse into the fundamentals, contemporary system architectures, recent experiments, and, finally, major microwave challenges–including packaging–that must be overcome if fault tolerant quantum computing is to become a reality.

Bio: Joseph Bardin received the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2009. In 2010, he joined the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is currently a Full Professor. His research group currently focuses on low temperature integrated circuits with applications in radio astronomy and the quantum information sciences. In 2017, he joined the Google Quantum AI team as a visiting faculty researcher and, in addition to his university appointment, he currently serves as a staff research scientist with this team. Professor Bardin has received the following awards: a 2011 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2014 NSF CAREER Award, a 2015 Office of Naval Research YIP Award, a 2016 UMass Amherst College of Engineering Barbara H. and Joseph I. Goldstein Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, a 2016 UMass Amherst Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity, and a 2020 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award.

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Abstract: This presentation will address material options, channel orientations, contact geometries, and the effects of scaling on n-channel FinFETs. However, the emphasize will be on the role and requirements of modeling and what we can learn from it in a complex system as much or more so than the system itself.  How prior knowledge of possible essential physics in the system(s) of interest informs the model choice—a quantum-corrected semiclassical Monte Carlo method in this case—and how the model integrates that essential physics to produce perhaps unexpected results will be considered. Here, the systems include Si, Ge, and In_o.53GaAs_O.47 n-channel FinFETs; <110> and <100> channel orientations; saddle/slot, raised source and drain, and reference end-contact geometries; and channel lengths (widths) from 18 (6) nm to 9 (3) nm are considered. Essential physics includes quasi-ballistic transport; multiple effects of quantum confinement in the channel including carrier redistribution in the channel, degeneracy breaking among energy valleys, and increases scattering rates; source and drain doping limitations; and limitations on specific contact resistivities.

Bio: Leonard Franklin (Frank) Register is the J. H. Herring Centennial Professor in Engineering, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. He received undergraduate degrees in both electrical engineering and physics summa cum laude before earning his PhD in electrical and computer engineering, all at North Carolina State University. He then held a faculty research scientist position within the Beckman Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin. He is a fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Physical Society (APS). He was the General Chair of SISPAD 2018, the 23rd International Conference on Simulation of Semiconductor Processes and Devices, the flagship conference devoted to technology computer-aided design (TCAD) and advanced modeling of semiconductor devices (which is held in the US only every third year). He has approximately 250 refereed journal and conference papers, book chapters, and patents and disclosures. His research has focused on understanding and modeling nano-scale electronic and optoelectronic devices and the essential physics underlying their operation for improved conventional and novel applications. His current interests include not only advanced CMOS, but also magnetic and spintronic materials and devices for beyond CMOS logic and memory devices and computing paradigms, and modeling of analysis of transport within and tunneling between two-dimensional material layers, including interpretation and analysis of related experimental results.

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Abstract: Research groups all over the world have been working enthusiastically on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), which provide a direct connection from the human brain to a computer. Dr. Guger will discuss how BCIs translate brain activity into control signals for numerous applications, including tools to help severely disabled users communicate and improve their quality of life. BCIs have been used to restore movement, assess cognitive functioning, map functions of the brain and provide communication and environmental control.

Bio: Christoph Guger studied electrical and biomedical engineering at the University of Technology Graz in Austria and Johns Hopkins University in the USA and received his PhD in 1999. In 1999 he started the company g.tec which was now branches in Austria, Spain, the USA and Hong Kong. g.tec produces high-quality neurotechnology and real-time brain computer interfaces for the research, medical and consumer market. The company is active in many international research projects about brain-computer interfacing, neuromodulation, stroke rehabilitation, assessment and communication with patients with disorders of consciousness and high-gamma mapping in epilepsy and tumor patients.

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Abstract: RNA-based drugs are emerging as a promising treatment for a number of diseases, including SARS-CoV-2. However, delivery vehicles that efficiently deliver RNA-based drugs are often limited to the liver, necessitating the optimization and discovery of new non-liver delivery vehicles. In this talk, I will discuss our pipeline for the identification of lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-based delivery vehicles, such as LNPs currently used by Pfizer and Moderna.

Bio: Kalina Paunovska is a postdoctoral scholar in the Georgia Tech Department of Biomedical Engineering. She was an NIH T‐32 fellow. She received her Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from the Georgia Tech and Emory, Atlanta, Georgia, in 2020. She received her B.S. degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, in 2016. Her research focuses on investigating the biological mechanisms that drive LNP delivery to different cell types, and the integration of next‐generation sequencing technologies with drug delivery.

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Abstract: Antibody production is an important component of the mechanism of action of anti-coronavirus vaccines, and high-affinity antibodies are also useful reagents in diagnostics and potential therapeutic applications. This presentation will update last year’s talk on our development of monoclonal antibodies and the characterization of their different functional properties with respect to coronavirus binding and neutralization. 

Bio: M.G. Finn received his Ph.D. degree in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working with Prof. K.B. Sharpless, followed by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1988, where his group studied and developed a variety of transition metal-mediated reactions for use in synthetic chemistry. Prof. Finn moved to the Department of Chemistry and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in 1998, and then to Georgia Tech in 2013. His current interests include the use of virus particles as molecular and catalytic building blocks for vaccine and functional materials development, the discovery of click reactions for organic and materials synthesis, polyvalent interactions in drug targeting, and the use of evolution for the discovery of chemical function. He was the first recipient of the annual Scripps Outstanding Mentor Award, and is Chief Scientific Officer of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center at Georgia Tech.

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Abstract: The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 with the resultant COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the need to rapidly advance vaccine development.  New vaccine technologies, such as mRNA and viral-vectored vaccines, moved rapidly through the various stages of vaccine clinical trials to FDA Emergency Use Authorization within about 9 months of starting their Phase I clinical trial.  Older technologies, such as protein-based vaccines, still have not completed their US Phase 3 clinical trials.  The success of mRNA vaccines in opens the door for applying this technology to currently vaccine-preventable illnesses (e.g., influenza) and other novel vaccine development.  Fundamental basic immunological and clinical questions remain about mRNA vaccine technology that will need to be addressed for this technology to usher in a new era in vaccinology.

Bio:  Evan J. Anderson is Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.  He graduated summa cum laude from Wheaton College, IL after which he pursued his medical degree at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.  He remained at the University of Chicago for residency in both internal medicine and pediatric followed by an adult and a pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Northwestern Memorial and Children’s Memorial Hospitals in Chicago.  As such, he is board certified in internal medicine, adult infectious diseases, pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases and splits his clinical care between adults and children. He moved from Northwestern to Emory University in 2012 where is an attending physician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in pediatric infectious diseases and Emory University Hospital in adult infectious diseases. He serves as the lead investigator in Georgia for influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 surveillance for the CDC-funded Emerging Infections Program. He is currently one of the multiple PIs of the Emory University Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU) and has been intricately involved with COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials for Moderna and also Janssen.  He particularly enjoys mentoring trainees at all levels and received the Emory Department of Pediatrics Research Mentor Award in 2017. He has over 150 total publications with particular interest in rotavirus, RSV, influenza, COVID-19, early phase vaccine clinical trials, and the power of community protection.

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Abstract: Many of the nation’s key priorities, building resilient infrastructure, mitigating climate change effects, developing an economy built on renewable and sustainable energy sources, enabling advanced manufacturing, exploiting space for the good of humanity and other national security related objectives, will depend in large part on a new generation of advanced materials. This talk will highlight the current state of advanced material production and adoption in the US, as well as compare it with other countries and regions pursuing similar goals.

Bio: Terrance Barkan founded The Graphene Council in 2013 as a global trade and professional community connecting scientists, academics, producers, end-users, and commercial professionals who have an interest in the research, development and application of graphene. The mission of The Graphene Council is to be a catalyst for the commercialization of graphene by meeting the needs of the global graphene community, helping to facilitate the development and application of this unique material.

For more than 30 years, Terrance Barkan CAE has been building trade and professional associations on a global basis, working in more than 70 countries on 6 continents around the world developing and implementing association growth strategy projects. Under the leadership of Mr. Barkan, The Graphene Council has become the leading global organization promoting the adoption of graphene enhanced advanced materials solutions.

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Bio: Pattie Maes is a professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences and until recently served as academic head. She runs the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces research group, which aims to radically reinvent the human-machine experience. Coming from a background in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, she is particularly interested in the topic of cognitive enhancement, or how immersive and wearable systems can actively assist people with memory, attention, learning, decision making, communication, and wellbeing.

Maes is the editor of three books, and is an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. She has received several awards: Fast Company named her one of 50 most influential designers (2011); Newsweek picked her as one of the “100 Americans to watch for” in the year 2000; TIME Digital selected her as a member of the “Cyber Elite,” the top 50 technological pioneers of the high-tech world; the World Economic Forum honored her with the title “Global Leader for Tomorrow”; Ars Electronica awarded her the 1995 World Wide Web category prize; and in 2000 she was recognized with the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. She has also received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, and her 2009 TED talk on “the 6th sense device” is among the mostwatched TED talks ever.

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Guest Speaker: Juhani Taskinen, VP, Head of PicoMedical Business Area
Guest Speaker: Mikko Matvejeff, D.Sc. (Tech.)/MBA Regional Sales Director, Picosun Oy; Country Manager, Picosun USA

This technical talk will start with an oveview of the Picosun ALD systems and the specific challenges that human interface electronics present in fabrication.

•  Protective/anti-corrosion layers
• Medical device protection (implantable electronics)
• Cytotoxicity, Endotoxicity and Antimicrobial Properties
• Biodegradable coating for pharmaceutical applications (drug release control and
• protection of pharmaceutical compounds in powder form)
• PCB/electronics protection (high-reliability electronics)
• High resolution surface analytics for sensitive organic surfaces

It is now well known that modeling and simulation is the third alternative to theory and experiments. Modeling and simulation is cheaper, faster and provides insight into physical processes occurring within the device that cannot be measured experimentally. As such, modeling and simulations reduces the time from design to production of a particular device and/or circuit. Simulation models must be validated against available experimental data and be consistent with theoretical predictions.

In this talk, I will present a summary of the available simulation methodologies and products that can be useful to the NNI community.  In particular, I will focus on the capabilities of TCAD tools (such as Silvaco Victory, Synopsys Sentaurus, Comsol, etc.), tools available free of charge on nanoHUB.org, and few examples of in-house simulation tools that have not yet been adopted by the TCAD community.

Bio: Dragica Vasileska (F’2019) received B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. Degree from the University Sts. Cyril and Methodius (Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia) in 1985 and 1991, respectively, and a Ph.D. Degree from Arizona State University in 1995. From 1995 until 1997, she held a faculty research associate position within the Center of Solid State Electronics Research at Arizona State University. In the fall of 1997, she joined the faculty of Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University. In 2002 she was promoted to associate professor, and in 2007 to full professor. Her research interests include semiconductor device physics and semiconductor device modeling, with strong emphasis on quantum transport and Monte Carlo device simulations. Recently, her research interests also include modeling metastability and reliability of solar cells. Prof. Vasileska published more than 180 publications in prestigious scientific journals, over 200 conference proceedings refereed papers, 25 book chapters, has given numerous invited talks and is a co-author on three books: "Computational Electronics," D. Vasileska and S. M. Goodnick, Morgan & Claypool, 2006; "Computational Electronics: Semiclassical and Quantum Transport Modeling," D. Vasileska, S. M. Goodnick and G. Klimeck, CRC Press, 2010, and "Modeling Self-Heating Effects in Nanoscale Devices," K. Raleva, A. Shaik, D. Vasileska and S. M. Goodnick, Institute of Physics Publishing, Morgan & Claypool, 2017. She is also an editor of two books: "Cutting Edge Nanotechnology," In-Tech, 2010 and "Nano-Electronic Devices: Semiclassical and Quantum Transport Modeling" (co-editor S. M. Goodnick), Springer, July 2011. Prof. Vasileska is a recipient of the 1998 NSF CAREER Award. Her students have won numerous awards at prestigious international scientific conferences.

Access the Seminar Here: https://tinyurl.com/NNCIseminarVasileska

Abstract: Recent advances in quantum technology and hardware have advanced MEMS systems to where these can now be designed and operated in the quantum regime, albeit using sophisticated quantum methods to control and measure the mechanics, and requiring cryogenic systems to enable operation in the quantum ground state. Quantum MEMS promise exciting new opportunities for applications in quantum information processing and storage, and for quantum sensing. Applications are particularly relevant to superconducting qubits, which provide a high fidelity, scalable platform for information processing but are lacking a compact means for quantum information storage. Superconducting qubits integrate easily with mechanical devices through the use of piezoelectric materials, and combined with the recent demonstration of ultrahigh quality factor, microwave-frequency mechanical devices points to fascinating opportunities for sub-mm scale memories and sensors. I will discuss the current state-of-the-art for integrating superconducting qubits with mechanical devices, focusing on operation of MEMS resonators and surface acoustic wave devices operating at the single phonon limit. I welcome discussion following my talk regarding future prospects for this novel technology.

Bio: Andrew N. Cleland is the John A. MacLean Sr. Professor for Quantum Engineering Innovation, and is a member of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He is the Director of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility and a Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. His research focuses on developing superconducting quantum circuits and nanoscale optical and mechanical devices. His accomplishments include the first demonstration of a mechanical system cooled to its quantum ground state; the demonstration of a high fidelity, scalable superconducting quantum bit operating at the threshold for quantum error-correction; and the development of a piezo-optomechanical system transducing between the microwave and optical frequency domains. Cleland is the author of over 130 peer-reviewed publications. His work was recognized as the Science "Breakthrough of the Year" for 2010, and selected as one of the "Top Ten Discoveries in Physics" by the Institute of Physics (United Kingdom) in both 2010 and 2011. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Cleland earned a BS in engineering physics and a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Cleland was a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and served as the Associate Director of the California Nanosystems Institute.

Access the Event: https://tinyurl.com/NanoTechCleland

Bio: Ali Besharatian has been in the field of MEMS and microelectronics for over a decade, first as a researcher at the University of Michigan where he received his Ph.D. in EECS, and later in the semiconductors industry as R&D engineer and manager. His multidisciplinary work targets brining concepts to mass production for acoustic, chemical, optical, and inertial sensors, in areas spanning consumer electronics, healthcare, automotive industry, and homeland security. Since January 2019, Dr. Besharatian has been a Technical Program Manager at Infineon Technologies, representing Infineon as the strategic partner of major Bay Area consumer electronic companies. In his role, he serves as the primary regional technical interface for new product introduction (NPI) projects at Infineon’s main customers for sensors. Dr. Besharatian has played a key role in bringing Infineon’s cutting-edge MEMS microphone technology (XENSIV™ SDM) from early prototypes to mass-production, enabling use-cases such as studio-quality audio pick-up in portable electronics and active-noise-cancelation in hearables for the first time.

Bio: Tolga Tekin, has received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He was a Research Scientist with the Optical Signal Processing Department, Fraunhofer HHI, where he was engaged in advanced research on optical signal processing, 3R-regeneration, all-optical switching, clock recovery, and integrated optics. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher on components for O-CDMA and terabit routers with the University of California. He worked at Teles AG on phased-array antennas and their components for skyDSL. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM), he then led projects on optical interconnects and silicon photonics packaging. At the Technical University of Berlin, he then engaged in microsystems, photonic integrated system-in-package, photonic interconnects, and 3-D heterogeneous integration research activities. He is group manager of Photonics and Plasmonic Systems at Fraunhofer IZM. He has been coordinator of European Flagship project on optical interconnects ‘FP7-PhoxTroT’, ‘H2020-L3MATRIX’ and is currently coordinating and ‘H2020-MASSTART’.

Access the event at: https://bluejeans.com/956721052

 Host: Professor Muhannad Bakir, mbakir@ece.gatech.edu

Bio: Takao Someya received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1997. Since 2009, he has been a professor of Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Tokyo. From 2001 to 2002, he worked at the Nanocenter (NSEC) of Columbia University and Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, as a Visiting Scholar. His current research focus is on stretchable and flexible organic electronics for the applications to healthcare, biomedical and robotics. He conducted NEDO/JAPERA Project as Project Leader (2011-2019) and currently leading JST/ACCEL Super-bioimager Project as Research Director (2017-2022). Prof. Someya received The 16th Leo Esaki Prize and the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2019. He was appointed a global scholar of Princeton University (2009-2017), MRS board of directors (2009-2011), and National University of Singapore (NUS) GlobalFoundaries Visiting Professor (2016-2019). His current appointments are: The Technical University of Munich (TUM) Hans Fischer Senior Fellow (2017-), Director of The Japan Society of Applied Physics (2018-), Associate Editor of Science Advances, and IEEE Spectrum Editorial Advisory Board Member.

His current research interests include organic transistors, flexible electronics, plastic integrated circuits, large-area sensors, and plastic actuators.

Access the Lecture at: https://tinyurl.com/CHICEsomeya

Bio: Gary K. Fedder is the Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, with courtesy appointments in Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and the Robotics Institute. He is also the faculty director of the university’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in EECS from MIT and his Ph.D. in EECS from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an IEEE Fellow for contributions to integrated MEMS. He has served in administrative roles at Carnegie Mellon as Vice Provost for Research, Director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems, and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering. From 2011 to 2012, Dr. Fedder served as a technical co-lead in the U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Partnership where he worked with industry, academia and government to generate recommendations that motivated the launch of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, now called Manufacturing USA. He was founding president and served as interim CEO of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute in 2017 and 2020.

Access URL: https://tinyurl.com/NanoTechFedder

Access the Recorded Town Hall Here: https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/events/playback/2a22156d-8dbe-40e8-a9e0-bc5acfc6797d

Bio: Subramanian S. Iyer (Subu) is Distinguished Professor and holds the Charles P. Reames Endowed Chair in the Electrical Engineering Department and a joint appointment in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is Director of the Center for Heterogeneous Integration and Performance Scaling (UCLA CHIPS). Prior to that he was an IBM Fellow. His key technical contributions have been the development of the world’s first SiGe base HBT, Salicide, electrical fuses, embedded DRAM and 45nm technology node used to make the first generation of truly low power portable devices as well as the first commercial interposer and 3D integrated products. He also was among the first to commercialize bonded SOI for CMOS applications through a start-up called SiBond LLC. More recently, he has been exploring new packaging paradigms and device innovations that may enable wafer-scale architectures, in-memory analog compute and medical engineering applications. He has published over 300 papers and holds over 75 patents. He has received several outstanding technical achievements and corporate awards at IBM. He is an IEEE Fellow, an APS Fellow, an iMAPS Fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE EDS and EPS and a member of the Board of Governors of IEEE EPS. He is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Bombay and received the IEEE Daniel Noble Medal for emerging technologies in 2012 and the 2020 iMAPS Daniel C. Hughes Jr Memorial award.

Abstract: Material properties and composite structures play key roles in tailoring the performance of soft robots. Unfortunately, current design and fabrication approaches limit the achievable complexity and functionality in these two categories and as a result hinder soft robot performance. This talk will discuss approaches that allow the design and direct fabrication of novel soft robot composite structures. The processes combine computational topology optimization, to determine required three-dimensional multimaterial composite structures, and direct fabrication using an all-in-one fabrication workflow with resilient hybrid polymers, enabling precise tailoring of mechanical and functional properties. The library of polymer mixtures synthesized for compatibility with the processes spans five orders of magnitude in elastic modulus. Application examples in bio-inspired soft robots and sensors, as well as soft grippers will be described. The results demonstrate the potential of having an all-in-one fabrication workflow capable of producing tailored complex soft robot composite bodies.

Bio: Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Product Development Pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), and a Research Affiliate in the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT. At SUTD, he is the director of the Bio-Inspired Robotics and Design Laboratory and the deputy director of the Digital Manufacturing and Design (DManD) Centre. He received his Ph.D., M.Sc., and B.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include: soft robotics, bio-inspired design, and advanced additive manufacturing processes. He was recognized with an MIT’s Technology Review 2012 TR35 Young Innovator Award for South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand for his contributions to novel vehicles for long-term exploration of harsh environments.

Abstract: While the biomedical importance of detecting cellular heterogeneity is widely accepted, we lack tools for detection of the vast majority of molecular heterogeneity, as expressed in proteins. In fact, oncoproteins and their proteoforms are implicated in tumor progression, metastasis, and drug resistance across different cancer types. Yet, a severely limited set of isoforms are even detectable, with single-cell resolution. A next-generation of cancer subtype classification tools that include protein isoforms are urgently needed.

Immunoassays are the de facto standard for direct measurement of endogenous, unmodified oncoproteins, including use of immunohistochemistry (IHC) in tissue analysis. Unfortunately, immunoassays lack the specificity needed for quantitation and even detection of important proteins, including truncated cancer isoforms like those of HER2 (t-erbB2).

We introduce a suite of high-specificity, protein analysis tools – with single-cell and sub-cellular resolution – that a profile protein isoform expression. The precision microfluidic tools are designed to augment classic IHC and single-cell genomics and transcriptomics – shedding light on ‘blind spots’ in pathology.

We will describe microfluidic systems engineered for precise cellular and molecular manipulation and measurement, centered around a single-cell immunoblotting (native, western, complexes, and isoelectric focusing). We discuss new strategies for sample preparation and imparting molecular selectivity, including through key physicochemical properties. Integration of standards to quantify and control technical variation will be presented, as both analytical variability (lack of isoform-specific antibody probes) and biological variability (small cell subpopulations diluted in bulk analysis) can render oncoproteins undetectable. We detail the important role of thermodynamic partitioning of immunoprobe into an immunoassay scaffold, and informed design of new hydrogel metrology tools and materials to overcome transport limitations.

We see refined taxonomies that include both cellular and molecular heterogeneity as essential to underpinning needed advances in cancer diagnostic and treatment strategies.

Bio: Amy E. Herr received a BS degree in Engineering & Applied Science from the California Institute of Technology and MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She is currently Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. Until 2020, she held an appointment as the Lester John & Lynne Dewar Lloyd Distinguished Professor. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she was a staff member in the Biosystems Research Group at Sandia National Laboratories. Her research interests include bioinstrumentation innovation to advance quantitation in the biosciences & biomedicine, in particular the study and application of electrokinetic phenomena in single-cell and sub-cellular analyses. Her pedagogical interests are in bioengineering design and transport. Prof. Herr is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and an elected member of the National Academy of Inventors. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the NSF CAREER award, NIH New Innovator Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Abstract:  Many mechanical deformations, such as buckling, wrinkling, collapsing, and delamination, are usually considered as threats to mechanical integrity and are avoided or reduced in the traditional design of materials and structures. My work goes against these conventions by tailoring such mechanical instabilities to create strain-engineered functional morphologies. We use ultralow bending stiffness and semiconducting properties of atomically-thin van der Waals (vdW) materials to enable strain-engineered properties and device-level multifunctionalities that extend beyond those of bulk material systems. In this talk, I will present our research on strain engineering of two-dimensional (2D) vdW materials, and the new and reconfigurable materials properties exhibited in such deformed and strain-engineered materials. First, I will introduce controlled mechanical deformation of 2D materials, and the wide range of strain-engineered properties engendered by these deformed materials, such as strain-engineered exciton transport (i.e., exciton strain-tronics). Furthermore, I will present our work on interfacial control using vdW materials to modulate fracture modes of thinfilms to enable a new phenomenon of strain resilient electrical functionality for flexible electronics. These mechanical instability-induced modulations of materials at the atomic level will open the door to unconventional and reconfigurable properties for applications in next generation deformable electronics and quantum devices.

Bio: Dr. Nam is an Associate Professor and Anderson Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering (MechSE) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received a B.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Seoul National University. Following three years of industry experience in carbon nanotube (CNT) processing, he obtained his M.A. in Physics (2007) and Ph.D. in Applied Physics (2011) from Harvard University. After his Ph.D., he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Nam is the recipient of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) Early Career Faculty Fellow Award, NSF CAREER Award, two DoD (AFOSR and ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Awards, NASA Early Career Faculty (ECF) Award, UIUC Center for Advanced Study Fellowship, UIUC Campus Distinguished Promotion Award, UIUC Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, UIUC Engineering Rose Award for Teaching Excellence, and UIUC Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising.

Link: https://tinyurl.com/CHCIEgl1

Wei Gao - Assistant Professor of Medical Engineering
Division of Engineering & Applied Science, California Institute of Technology

Abstract: The rising research interest in personalized medicine promises to revolutionize traditional medical practices. This presents a tremendous opportunity for developing wearable devices toward predictive analytics and treatment. In this talk, I will introduce our recent advances in developing fully-integrated skin-interfaced flexible biosensors for non-invasive molecular analysis. Such wearable biosensors can continuously, selectively, and accurately measure a wide spectrum of sweat analytes including metabolites, electrolytes, hormones, drugs, and other small molecules. These devices also allow us to gain real-time insight into the sweat secretion and gland physiology. The clinical value of our wearable sensing platforms is evaluated through multiple human studies involving both healthy and patient populations toward physiological monitoring, disease diagnosis, and drug monitoring. This talk will also feature our very recent works on laser-engraved lab on the skin and biofuel powered battery-free electronic skin toward metabolic/nutritional management as well as dynamic stress monitoring. These wearable and flexible devices could open the door to a wide range of personalized monitoring, diagnostic, and therapeutic applications.

Bio: Wei Gao is an Assistant Professor of Medical Engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at University of California, San Diego in 2014 as a Jacobs Fellow and HHMI International Student Research Fellow. In 2014-2017, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a recipient of IEEE EMBS Early Career Achievement Award, IEEE Sensor Council Technical Achievement Award, Sensors Young Investigator Award, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35) and ACS Young Investigator Award (Division of Inorganic Chemistry). He is a World Economic Forum Young Scientist (Class of 2020) and a member of Global Young Academy (Class of 2019). His research interests include wearable devices, biosensors, flexible electronics, micro/nanorobotics, and nanomedicine. For more information about Gao’s research, visit  www.gao.caltech.edu/.

Hosted by: Professor W. Hong Yeo; Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech

Abstract: Under a microscope, cells appear stationary, but in reality, cells are highly dynamic structures that are pulling and pushing on one another and on their surroundings. These pulls and pushes are mediated by minuscule forces – at the scale of tens of piconewtons, less than one-billionth the weight of an apple. For context, a force of 7 pN applied a distance of 1 nm equals 1 kcal/mol. Nonetheless, these forces can have profound biochemical impact. For example, the rapidly fluctuating forces in a growing embryo alter cell growth and fate by activating different adhesion pathways. Despite the importance of mechanics in most life processes there are limited methods to study and manipulate forces at molecular scales. In this talk, I will describe the development of DNA mechanotechnology -  nucleic acid nanostructures that can sense, generate and transmit piconewton forces. I’ll start by describing molecular tension probes which are DNA structures that unfold at specific thresholds of tension. I will show exciting new advances that harness fluorescence polarization spectroscopy and super-resolution imaging to provide the highest resolution maps of cell traction forces reported to date. Armed with these new tools, I will demonstrate that molecular forces not only give rise to tissue architecture but also to boost the fidelity of information transfer between cells. We dubbed this mechanism mechanical proofreading in analogy to the kinetic proofreading model used explain the extraordinary fidelity of DNA replication and protein expression. Next, I will describe DNA nanostructures that transmit forces and drive mechanical unfolding of target molecules. With these actuators we show the first example of a force-pump probe type of experiment to perform time-resolved unfolding of biomolecules. Finally, I will end with a brief description of DNA motors that open the door for next generation point of care sensing technologies.

Bio: Khalid Salaita is a Professor of Chemistry at Emory University. Khalid pursued undergraduate studies at Old Dominion University under the mentorship of Prof. Nancy Xu studying the spectroscopic properties of plasmonic nanoparticles. He obtained his Ph.D. with Prof. Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University studying the electrochemical properties of organic adsorbates patterned onto gold films and developed massively parallel scanning probe lithography approaches. From 2006-2009, Khalid was a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Jay T. Groves at the University of California at Berkeley where he investigated the role of receptor clustering in modulating cell signaling. In 2009, Khalid started his own lab at Emory University, where he investigates the interface between living systems and engineered nanoscale materials. To achieve this goal, his group has pioneered the development of molecular force sensor, DNA mechanotechnology, smart therapeutics, and nanoscale mechanical actuators to manipulate living cells. In recognition of his independent work, Khalid has received a number of awards, most notably the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Camille-Dreyfus Teacher Scholar award, the National Science Foundation Early CAREER award, and the Kavli Fellowship. Khalid is currently a member of the Enabling Bioanalytical and Imaging Technologies (EBIT) NIH study Section and an Associate Editor of Smart Materials. Khalid’s program has been supported by NSF, NIH, and DARPA.

Co-sponsored by Microphysiological Systems Seminar Series

Abstract: Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) offer the potential to generate large numbers of functional cardiomyocytes from clonal and patient-specific cell sources. Here we show that temporal modulation of Wnt signaling is both essential and sufficient for efficient cardiac induction in hPSCs under defined, growth factor-free conditions. shRNA knockdown of β-catenin during the initial stage of hPSC differentiation fully blocked cardiomyocyte specification, whereas glycogen synthase kinase 3 inhibition at this point enhanced cardiomyocyte generation. Furthermore, sequential treatment of hPSCs with glycogen synthase kinase 3 inhibitors followed by inducible expression of β-catenin shRNA or chemical inhibitors of Wnt signaling produced a high yield of virtually (up to 98%) pure functional human cardiomyocytes from multiple hPSC lines. The robust ability to generate functional cardiomyocytes under defined, growth factor-free conditions solely by genetic or chemically mediated manipulation of a single developmental pathway should facilitate scalable production of cardiac cells suitable for research and regenerative applications.

Bio: Dr. Lance Lian received his PhD in Chemical engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. During his PhD, Dr. Lian's “Cardiomyocyte Differentiation from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells” paper was awarded the best biomedical paper in PNAS and the Cozzarelli Prize of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. Dr. Lian did his postdoc training at Harvard University and Karolinska Institute for stem cell research. After joining Penn State in 2015, Dr. Lian developed the world’s first pancreatic cell differentiation method from stem cells for treating diabetes with only small molecules, which makes this production much more cost-effective and efficient. 

Hosted by: Graduates In Nanotechnology (GIN) Research Group at Georgia Tech

Anyone involved in nanotechnology research at Georgia Tech is welcome to join GIN, undergraduates through post-doctorial.

Email Quinn Spadola at: quinn.spadola@ien.gatech.edu

Hitesh Handa, Assistant Professor
School of Chemical, Materials, and Biomedical Engineering
University of Georgia

Abstract: Blood/material interaction is critical to the success of implantable medical devices, ranging from simple catheters, stents and grafts, to complex extracorporeal artificial organs which are used in thousands of patients every day.  There are two major limiting factors to clinical application of blood contacting materials: 1) platelet activation leading to thrombosis, and 2) infection.  Despite a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of blood–surface interactions, and decades of bioengineering research effort, the ideal non-thrombogenic prosthetic surface remains an unsolved problem.  One approach to improving the hemocompatibility of blood-contacting devices is to develop materials that release nitric oxide (NO), a known potent inhibitor of platelet adhesion/activation and also an antimicrobial agent.  Healthy endothelial cells exhibit a NO flux of 0.5-4x10^-10 mol cm^-2 min^-1, and materials that mimic this NO release are expected to have similar anti-thrombotic properties.  The potential of incorporating NO donor molecules such as S-nitrosothiols (RSNOs) into various polymers, and their hemocompatibility and antibacterial properties in short-term (4 h) and long-term (9 d) animal models will be discussed

Bio: Dr. Hitesh Handa is a faculty member in the School of Chemical, Materials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Georgia.  Dr. Handa's area of focus is in translational research for development of medical device coatings, wound healing materials, therapeutic nanoparticles, and microfluidic artificial lungs.   This work in designing innovative materials and testing them in animal models has resulted in over 70 publications and 12 patent applications.  Hitesh’s work has been funded by NIH, CDC, Department of Veteran Affairs, US Army, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Geneva Foundation, and industrial grants. Hitesh is also the founder of inNOveta Biomedical LLC which is exploring possibilities of using nitric oxide releasing materials for medical applications. With his experience in biomolecular interactions, materials/surface science, polymeric coatings, blood-surface interactions and animal models, his goal is to bridge the gap between the engineers and clinical researchers in the field of biocompatible materials.

Graduates in Nanotechnology Guest Seminar: Challenges and Opportunities in Decarbonizing Fuels and Chemicals

Yang Shao-Horn | Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Leidong Mao, Ph.D. |  Professor; School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Georgia

Abstract: Manipulating micron- and nano-sized objects in magnetic liquids in a continuous flow through so- called “ferrohydrodynamics” is a relatively new research field. It has resulted in label-free manipulation techniques in microfluidic systems and exciting applications such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and exosomes enrichment. It is the goal of this talk to introduce the fundamental principles of ferrohydrodynamics and its recent applications in microfluidic enrichment of CTCs and exosomes developed in my lab.

Bio: Leidong Mao is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from Yale University. He is interested in developing new microfluidic technologies for biological or biomedical applications such as cancer cell isolation and understanding the biological clock.

Register to receive meeting URL: https://tinyurl.com/fall2020nanofanswebinars

Carlos S. Moreno, Ph.D. | Associate Professor; Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine

Abstract: As the global coronavirus pandemic continues, there is an urgent clinical and epidemiological need to be able to assess whether or not someone has contracted COVID19. The ResonanceDx Bulk Acoustic Resonance Sensing (BARS) platform detects the shifts in the piezoelectric acoustic resonant frequencies that occur upon antibody-antigen binding and is approximately an order of magnitude more sensitive than standard ELISA detection methods. Moreover, this approach provides results in approximately 5 minutes with no sample processing or expensive or hard to manufacture reagents, enabling the use of whole blood or saliva. The applications for such a rapid point-of-care COVID19 diagnostic test are numerous, including identifying exposed healthcare workers, safely facilitating regular procedures from dental visits to elective surgery, allowing family members to visit hospitals or nursing homes, allowing non-essential workers to return to work, college students to campus, safe travel on airlines or cruises, or admission to large gatherings for members of the general public.

Bio: Dr. Moreno obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, and worked for NASA before he earned his PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Emory University in 1998. He is Associate Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at Emory University, where he is a member of the Winship Cancer Institute. He specializes in cancer bioinformatics and cancer genomics, and his laboratory has used whole genome expression analysis and next-generation sequencing to identify biomarkers of aggressive disease in prostate cancer. He is Section Editor-in-Chief of the Cancer Biomarkers section of the journal Cancers. He is a co-inventor on a patent application for a system to detect biomarkers using piezoelectric resonators. In 2017, he co-founded ResonanceDx to develop rapid, point-of-care diagnostic devices.

Register to receive meeting URL: https://tinyurl.com/fall2020nanofanswebinars

Leanne West, MS | Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technology Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: The Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center at Georgia Tech has been funding research in pediatrics since 2012. In 2018, a relationship was forged with Shriners Hospitals. This talk will focus on some of the technologies funded through these relationships, as well as other resources and funding opportunities available with pediatric partners, including information on the new NIH RADx Initiative, the Atlanta Center for Microsystems Engineered Point-of-Care Technologies (ACME POCT), and the AppHatchery services offered by the Georgia CTSA.

Bio: : Leanne West is a Principal Research Scientist and the Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research includes remote sensing, sensor development, and mobile health applications. She is also the President of the International Children’s Advisory Network, a non-profit that promotes the pediatric patient voice in healthcare, research, and innovation. She sits on the Boards of the Georgia Technology Authority and Hope for Henry, is on the executive leadership team of the International Society of Pediatric Innovation, and is a member of the External Technical Advisory Committee for the Pediatric Trial Network.

Register to receive meeting URL: https://tinyurl.com/fall2020nanofanswebinars

Jianjun Wei, Ph.D. | Professor of Nanoscience; Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Abstract: Nano-plasmonics, an emerging branch field of nanophotonics concerning properties of collective electronic excitations (surface plasmon, SP) in nanostructures of noble metals (e.g. silver and gold), has attracted intense attention due to its versatility for optical sensing and chip-based device integration. This talk covers our recent work developing a chip-based nanostructure metal film towards a nano-optofluidic device that incorporates an optical transmission sensing scheme with a function of size-dependent sample delivery in a single nanoscale unit. The device has been tested for delivery and detection of a couple disease related protein biomarkers (f-PSA for prostate cancer and anti-insulin antibody of type 1 diabetes (T1D)) as proof-of-concept, which offers a promise for development of a point-of-care technology in health care.

Bio: Dr. Jianjun Wei is currently a Professor of Nanoscience at the Joint school of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Dr. Wei joined JSNN/UNCG in 2013 as an Associate Professor of Nanosciece. Dr. Wei's research at JSNN has been supported by grants from NSF, NIH, NCBC, DOD and NC state funding. Prior to joining JSNN, he had worked in CFD Research Corporation in Huntsville, AL, from 2006 to 2013, and led as a Principal Scientist (PI or co-PI) for a number of BAA, SBIR/STTR Phase I, II, and III US government contracts primarily through NIH, NASA and DOD research grants. He obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2004 at the University of Pittsburgh, followed with one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the same university.

Register to receive meeting URL: https://tinyurl.com/fall2020nanofanswebinars

Saima Afroz Siddiqui; Postdoctoral Associate
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: Magnetic devices promise intriguing design paradigms where electron spin is used as the information token instead of its charge counterpart. While magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) is considered one of the most mature nonvolatile memory technologies for next generation computers, spin-based devices can be a game-changing option for beyond-CMOS and in memory computing. In the future cognitive era, nonvolatile memories hold the key to overcome the bottleneck in the computational performance due to data shuttling between the processing and the memory units. The application of spintronic devices for cognitive applications requires versatile, scalable device design that is adaptable to emerging material physics. Spin-orbit torque driven magnetic tunnel junction has emerged as one of the most promising candidates for energy-efficient nonvolatile logic and memory devices. In this talk, I will discuss the design-space of spintronics devices as the key building blocks for in-memory computing and benchmark the performance metrics with other state-of-the-art non-volatile memories. I will show the first experimental demonstrations of linear synaptic weight generator and the nonlinear activation function generator integrated in a single device and operating with sub-10 ns pulses. The introduction of antiferromagnetic materials in these devices promises to enable even picosecond operations. A complete neuromorphic hardware accelerator using nonvolatile magnetic devices can revolutionize computer architectures by embedding memory into logic circuits in a fine-grained fashion.

Bio: Saima Siddiqui is a postdoctoral associate at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. After completing her PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2018, she spent nine months at Argonne National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Science division. Her research focus is to explore novel physical phenomena of electron’s spin in quantum materials and implement them in building Boolean and non-Boolean devices for next generation energy-efficient computing. She has been selected as an EECS rising star in 2019.

Hosted by Professor Asif Khan, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech

Bio: Dr. Conrad Tucker is an Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of
Mechanical Engineering and Machine Learning (Courtesy) at Carnegie Mellon
University. His research focuses on the design and optimization of systems through the acquisition, integration and mining of large scale, disparate data.

Dr. Tucker has served as PI/Co-PI on federally/non-federally funded grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) via the NSF Center
for eDesign, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). In February 2016, he was invited by National Academy of Engineering (NAE) President Dr. Dan Mote, to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium. He received his Ph.D., M.S. (Industrial Engineering), and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Register at this Link:  https://tinyurl.com/GTPRCvdl2

Abstract: Functional tissue bioprinting combines rationally designed biomaterials, functional cell cultures, and macromolecules into a unified in vitro 3D construct that can recapitulate the mechanical, structural, and functional niche of native tissues. 3D bioprinting has demonstrated a tremendous potential in regenerative medicine and in modeling of a wide variety of disorders and malignancies. The Serpooshan lab partners with clinicians and engineers to characterize the critical parameters that are necessary for functional tissue engineering by developing patient-inspired bioprinted models of congenital heart diseases such as pulmonary vein stenosis (PVS), pulmonary artery atresia (PAA), and hypoplastic left ventricle syndrome (HLHS). We have developed microvascular in vitro models of diseases using 3D reconstruction and bioprinting inspired by patient CT data. These in vitro models are cellularized with appropriate cell types to recapitulate the target tissue complexity and functionality. Microvascular tissue constructs are cultured under flow using custom bioreactors. Flow hemodynamics is modelled via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, which will be compared to experimental flow data measured by 3D ultrasound and 4D MR imaging. We further explore whether the application of nanoparticles, including super paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) and gold nanoparticles, confer various functionalities to bioprinted tissue constructs. Specific functions include antibacterial activity, electrical conductivity, bioactive molecule/drug delivery, and imaging via CT and/or MRI. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of bioprinting a variety of cardiovascular cells, to create perfusable, patient inspired constructs for a variety of in vitro and in vivo applications. Deeper understanding of the heterogenous cell population behavior in biomimetic models that incorporate tissue-like geometrical, chemical, and biomechanical ques could offer substantial insights for prevention and treatment of disease.

Bio: Dr. Tomov obtained his PhD from the State University at Albany, in the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, working under Dr. Janet Paluh to develop and characterize ethnically-diverse stem cell lines that could be used to better tailor regenerative therapies and drug discovery. After defending his PhD, Dr. Tomov accepted a position at the Stanley Center at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where his research focused on developing a panel of DNA-conjugated antibodies that would allow fluorescence-based multi-dimensional sample analysis, using standard confocal microscopy. This technique, called DNA-PRISM, was successfully used to characterize cortical and motor neurons differentiated from neurodegenerative (SMA/ALS) and neurodevelopmental (schizophrenia/macrocephaly) disease-derived stem cell lines. His research involved fully integrating the DNA-PRISM technology with an automated assay for high-throughput compound screening and multidimensional data analysis. After he joined Dr. Vahid Serpooshan’s lab at Emory and Georgia Tech’s BME department, Dr. Tomov is now pursuing his interests in understanding the cellular-molecular mechanisms and regenerative potential of cardiovascular tissue engineering. Dr Tomov is interested in 3D bioprinting and biofabrication of vascularized cardiovascular tissue constructs, where his high-throughput cellular assay development skills and biomanufacturing expertise can develop functional models of cardiovascular disease and improve patient outcomes during surgical interventions

Co-sponsored by Microphysiological Systems Seminar Series

David Myers, Assistant Professor
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech and Emory

Abstract: Microsystems have dramatically changed how we interact with the world, from tracking fitness-related activity to improving transportation safety, yet microsystems have failed to live up to their potential in biomedical and clinical settings. In this talk, I review my efforts at addressing this issue and detail my journey from state-of-the-art microsystem development to cutting edge biological and clinical research. Beginning with a discussion of advanced microsystem design, I highlight the exceptional capabilities of today’s microsystems, including some of my own work on high-performance automotive and ballistic sensors. I demonstrate that these microsystem tools have enormous potential in biomedical research and clinical settings, but that fully realizing the capabilities of this established field lies in designing new robust microsystems capable of answering clinically relevant problems. As a case study, I examine the creation of the platelet contraction cytometer, a tool that has led to important insights into our understanding of the process of hemostasis. By applying a microsystems-based toolset to a challenging biomedical question, I show how we have started to better define the mechanical behavior of clots, which is pathologically linked to bleeding and thrombosis. Moreover, I discuss how our microsystems-based approach may represent an entirely new class of biophysical biomarker for bleeding that is independent of existing tests. Finally, I conclude with how quantitatively defining the platelet has led to interesting new insights into biomechanical structures.

Bio: David Myers is currently an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. David’s varied interests have fueled an unusual educational background that fuses engineering, microsystem design, biology, and clinical research. David received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Virginia Commonwealth Univ. and his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, under the tutelage of one of the early microsystems pioneers, Albert Pisano. Driven by a desire to see new types of sensors in the clinic, David undertook a postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical and clinical research with Wilbur Lam in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech. Working at the intersection of these fields, David has authored or contributed to publications in Nature Materials, Nature Communications, PNAS, and Blood, and is the recipient of an NIH R21 Trailblazer Award as well as an NIH K25 Award.

Co-sponsored by Microphysiological Systems Seminar Series

Ayse Coskun, Professor
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

Abstract: The design of today's leading-edge systems is fraught with power, thermal, and variability challenges. The applications in rapidly growing computing domains of cloud and HPC exhibit significant diversity and require an increasing number of threads and much larger data transfers compared to applications of the past. In tandem, power and thermal constraints limit the number of transistors that can be used simultaneously, which has led to the Dark Silicon problem. Thus, it is becoming increasingly difficult to harness the full potential of computer chips.

This talk argues that there is a need for novel design and management approaches to push computing systems operation closer to their peak capacity and reclaim the dark silicon. Specifically, the talk will discuss how to use 2.5D integration technology with silicon photonic networks (PNoCs) to build (heterogeneous) computing systems that provide the desired parallelism, heterogeneity, and network bandwidth to handle the demands of the next-generation applications. At the core of this ambitious vision is designing modeling and optimization frameworks that are able to capture and tweak the complex cross-layer interactions among devices, architecture, applications, and their power/thermal characteristics. Specific methods that will be highlighted in the talk include runtime management of applications and PNoC wavelengths, EDA methods that optimize placement & routing of PNoC systems with strong power and thermal awareness, and new architectures built with PNoCs.

Bio: Ayse K. Coskun is currently an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University. She received her MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from University of California, San Diego. Ayse’s research interests are broadly in design automation, computer systems, and architecture, with a particular focus on energy efficiency and intelligent computer system analytics methods. She worked at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) prior to her appointment at BU. Ayse is currently an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design and Transactions on Computers and serves in the executive committee of the IEEE Council on EDA (CEDA). She received the NSF CAREER award (2012), several best paper awards, and the IEEE CEDA Ernest Kuh Early Career Award (2017). Coskun was recently selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (2019).

Hosted by: Professor Muhannad Bakir; School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech

Dr. Sourav Banerjee | Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina

July 23, 2020 | 11AM EST | The Cyber

Abstract: Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are gradually transforming at the interface of biology for multiple novel applications in the future. Integrated Material Assessment and Predictive Simulation Laboratory (i-MAPS) at the University of South Carolina (UofSC) has significant thrust on acoustical biomimetic for various applications. The approach is primarily based on observation, modeling and fabrication. All applications are derived from natural acoustic processes that we tend to ignore but naturally developed in the mammalian body. Through observation of the mechanism, understanding of the physics is derived from modified optimized physics-based models. Upon confirmation, the systems are fabricated for testing and validation. a) Inspired by the human cochlea, which is a magnificent acoustic device, an artificial basilar membrane is fabricated for potential use as mechanical Fourier Transformer. The device has potential applications in artificial hearing aids and artificial hearing devices for efficient human-robot interactions in the future. b) Natural transport of medicine and molecules through blood-brain-barrier (BBB) is challenging, however, with the aid of acoustical perturbation it is found to have increased absorption. Through understanding the physical mechanism acoustically aided artificial BBB are researched with neural experiments in acoustically aided microfluidic system. c) The lab-on-a-chip devices are very effective in sensing different mechanical and physical parameters related to biosensing, irrespective of their field of application, but has noticeable limitations. The limitation comes mostly from the demands posed by the users in a simultaneous sensing and the actuation environment, employing mutually exclusive physics and mechanisms. To overcome such limitations, acoustic waves devices are proposed for both sensing and actuation in a single platform simultaneously. The physics of surface acoustic wave (SAW) is one valuable physics used in MEMS that gives SAW devices to cover a wide range of applications such as filters, oscillators, transformers, sensors and actuators for biosensing.

Bio: Dr. Sourav Banerjee is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of South Carolina (UofSC). Before joining UofSC Dr. Banerjee served as Senior Research Scientist and then Director of Product Development in Acellent Technologies Inc. during 2008 and 2011. Dr. Banerjee’s research is focused on Ultrasonic and Acoustic waves while catering to multiple fields including ultrasonic wave based biomedical device applications. He serves in the editorial board of Scientific Reports published by Nature Publishing Group, International Aeronautics Journal, International Journal of Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering. Dr. Banerjee also serve as an advisory board member of the Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems, published by ASME. He has numerous research and teaching awards such as Achenbach Medal, 2010, Michael J. Mungo Award 2017, SHM person of the year award (2019) etc. for his contribution. Dr. Banerjee received Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics and Applied Mathematics from University of Arizona, Tucson, USA in 2005.

https://tinyurl.com/saws2020

Dr. Gangli Wang - Professor of Chemistry, Georgia State University

Abstract: A new method named ‘NanoAC’ is developed to monitor and actively control the nucleation and crystal growth insitu at individual level, or at single entity resolution. The formation and growth of a single atto-liter droplet which ultimately transforms into a single crystal, one at a time, under electroanalytical sensing together with optical imaging, is regulated under an external electrical field. The toolbox uses a quartz capillary with a single nanometer sized opening, i.e. a nanopore, to confine materials exchange between an analyte solution and a precipitating solution. Protein insulin and lysozyme are used as prototype materials system. Combined electroanalytical measurements and optical imaging provide vital feedbacks for the active control of mass transport through the single nanopore. Passive diffusion as well as active migration under an external electrical field controls the kinetics of transport and thus phase transitions. The nanopore region limits the mass exchange between internal precipitants and external sample solutions separated by this single nanopore, through which the transport of charges generates current signal as a quantitative measure. The methodology, including the measurement characteristics as feedbacks and the control of mass transport, are generalizable for other materials system. The governing mechanism is explained by the fundamental mass transport at nanometer scale interfaces.

Bio: Dr. Gangli Wang got his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Peking University in 1996 and 1999 respectively. He received his Ph. D. degree under the direction of Dr. Royce Murray at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004. After a postdoc training with Dr. Henry White at the University of Utah, Gangli started his independent career at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is currently a full professor of chemistry. The main thrust of his research is centered at the nanoelectrochemistry regime, to gain fundamental insights for better energy and biomedical applications. The grants from NSF (CHE-1610616) and DOE (DE-SC0019043) are acknowledged.

Register Here: https://tinyurl.com/saws2020

Dr. Arden Moore - Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Louisiana Tech University

Abstract: The rapid development of faster, cheaper, and more powerful computing has led to some of the most important technological and societal advances in modern history. However, the physical means associated with enhancing computing capabilities at the device and die levels have also created a very challenging set of circumstances for keeping electronic devices cool, a critical factor in determining their speed, efficiency, and reliability. With advances in nanoelectronics and the emergence of new application areas such as three-dimensional chip stack architectures and flexible electronics, now more than ever there are both needs and opportunities for novel materials and strategies to help address some of these pressing thermal management challenges. In this talk, our group’s work in the areas of new materials, advanced sensing, and developing a more robust understanding of thermal energy transport across length scales is presented, with emphasis on research areas which leverage industry-relevant materials science and microfabrication principles.

Bio: Dr. Arden Moore is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University and holds the Contractor's Trust #1 Endowed Chair. Dr. Moore also has a joint appointment with the Institute for Micromanufacturing (IfM) where he works on advanced materials and devices for multi-scale energy applications. Prior to joining the faculty at Louisiana Tech, Dr. Moore was a Thermal Advisory Engineer for IBM’s Systems & Technology Group from 2011 to 2013 where he designed and developed electronics thermal management solutions from the die level up to full server systems. In addition to academic publications, Dr. Moore is inventor or co-inventor on over a dozen patents or patent applications related to thermal management. He is a 2019 National Science Foundation CAREER Awardee and currently serves on the advisory board of Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. Dr. Moore graduated with his Ph. D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010.

Register Here: https://tinyurl.com/saws2020

M.G. Finn, Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry; Georgia Institute of Technology

"Spring 2020 NanoFANS (Focusing on Advanced Nanobio- Systems) program will be offered in a weekly webinar format during the month of May. The focus of this event will be “Nanotechnology in Infectious Diseases (Diagnostics/Therapeutics).”

In the current global pandemic situation, infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with viruses such as, ebola, SARS-Cov, SARS-Cov-2 in particular, making global impact on healthcare and socio-economic development. The rapid development of drug resistance to currently available therapies and associated side effects leads to serious public health concern; hence, devising novel treatment strategies is of paramount importance. The application of nanotechnology in infectious diseases is fast-revolutionizing the biomedical field and the healthcare sector and has a potential to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases."

Abstract: Virus detection and immunization both require exquisite molecular recognition of virus-specific structures. Achieving such recognition is one of the chief functions of the immune system. Over the past three months, we have asked the mouse immune system to accomplish this, in a straightforward but intense series of experiments focused on the obvious coronavirus target: the “spike” protein that the pathogen uses to interact with and invade human cells. The general approach, platform design and manufacture, and current results will be described, along with a discussion of where we and others may go next in the rapid development of SARS-nCoV-2 detection and therapy.

Bio: M.G. Finn received his Ph.D. degree in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working with Prof. K.B. Sharpless, followed by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. J.P. Collman at Stanford University. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1988, where his group studied and developed a variety of transition metal-
mediated processes. Prof. Finn moved to the Department of Chemistry and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in 1998, and then to the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the School of Biology at Georgia Tech in 2013. His current interests include the use of virus particles as molecular and catalytic building blocks for vaccine and functional materials development, the discovery of click reactions for organic and materials synthesis, polyvalent interactions in drug targeting, and the use of evolution for the discovery of chemical function. He was the first recipient of the annual Scripps Outstanding Mentor Award, and is Editor-in- Chief of the journal ACS Combinatorial Science.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/nanofanswebinar

Event Address: Webinar link will be sent to all those registered prior to the event

Mengkun Tian, Ph.D. - Research Scientist II; Institute for Electronics & Nanotechnology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: In-situ heating experiment performed in the scanning/ transmission electron microscopes (STEM/TEM) allows us to directly observe the dynamic behaviors of the materials with sizes ranging from micron- to atomic level in real time. The Materials Characterization Facilities (MCF) at IEN currently has two microscopes (FEI Tecnai F30 and Hitachi HD2700) with in-situ heating capabilities. The TEM techniques including (large-scale or atomic) imaging, phase/elemental analysis and diffraction that we could perform in those facilities for in-situ heating will be introduced briefly. A few examples made by the users and manufactures will be given to show how useful the in-situ heating experiments can help us to understand the structural evolution of materials fundamentally. Finally, it will be discussed a strategy to deal with preparation of TEM samples for high temperature heating.

Bio: Dr. Mengkun Tian received his Ph.D. degree in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) in 2015, supervised by Prof. Duscher (UTK) and Dr.Geohegan (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). His dissertation is related to structural evolution of photocatalytic TiO2 made by ultra-small amorphous building blocks. During 2015 and 2018, he worked as a post-doc research associate in Dr.Zawodzinski’s group at UTK to fabricate and investigate the corrosion resistant cathode materials for solid acid fuel cell. He was a visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2011 to 2018. He joined Georgia Tech as a post-doc in May, 2018 and was promoted to research scientist II last October. His current research interests include in-situ corrosion testing on metals, electron beam induced phase transformation, and phase transformation of high entropy alloys.

Who should attend: Faculty, scientists, engineers, researchers, and technical staff from university, company, or government labs who use, or are interested in learning about material characterization toolset, in particular, SEM/TEM as part of their research efforts.

Ben Hollerbach: Process-Equipment Engineer II; Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: The creation of a photomask set is the first step to producing any variety of semiconductor devices. Thinking through how each mask will be used and the processing steps around them will ensure a smoother process flow and greater device yield. A brief overview of the terminology, technology, techniques around photomask design & creation, and the tools needed to evaluate and fabricate a successful photomask set will be presented.

Bio: Mr. Ben Hollerbach is a Process-Equipment Engineer at Georgia Tech’s Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology. He started working for the IEN in 2005 while a student at Georgia Tech. After received his bachelor’s degree in industrial design he began working full time for the IEN and in 2009 took over the management of the IEN’s Mask Shop. Over the past 11 years Ben has managed the evolution of photomask production from the use of a 1970’s era GCA Mann Pattern Generator & Stepper through first generation Laser Writers to today’s modern Heidelberg MLA150 Maskless Aligners.

Who should attend: Faculty, scientists, engineers, researchers, and technical staff from university, company, or government labs who are interested in learning about, micro-fabrication, in particular, photomask design, as part of their research efforts.

Chris White: Process Equipment Engineer - Packaging; Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology & Packaging Research Center, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: The shared user labs within the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech include an electronics packaging toolset. A brief overview of assembly and interconnection toolsets and technologies available within IEN will be presented. A process overview on wire-bonding capabilities will also be discussed.

Bio: Mr. Chris White is currently the packaging tool support lead within the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2009 and started working in the Packaging Research Center on campus to support the research labs within the center. His team currently supports the packaging toolsets within the IEN shared user labs with a primary focus on microelectronics assembly process tools.

Who should attend: Faculty, scientists, engineers, researchers, and technical staff from university, company, or government labs who use, or are interested in learning microelectronics packaging techniques with reference to wire-bong, in particular, as part of their research efforts.

David Tavakoli, Research Scientist II & MCF/IEN PANalytical XRD Facilities Manager, School of Material Science & Engineering @ Georgia Tech

Paul Joseph, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology

The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC) housed at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech is hosting a series of online technical seminars, from 11am - 12pm, open to the academic and industrial community with an interest in cleanroom fabrication and processing for materials, biological, and electronics research.

We invite you to join us at any of the lectures  by registering at the link at the bottom of the page. On the registration form, please check the seminars for which you are interested (you are not limited in the number) so that appropriate accompanying materials, if needed, are prepared.

Abstract: Soft lithography (SL) refers to a family of techniques for fabricating or replicating structures using elastomeric stamps, molds, and conformable photomasks. Fabrication of microfluidic devices by SL is the most popular approach due to simplicity and low cost. In this approach PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) is cast on a SU-8 master mold to generate elastomeric stamps that are then sealed against glass slides using oxygen plasma. SL plays a vital role in microfluidics, ranging from simple channel fabrication with inlet/outlet to the creation of micropatterns onto a substrate surface. SL includes a collection of fabrication methods that are all based on using an elastomeric (or PDMS) stamp. These methods with reference to Microfluidics device fabrication (µDF), Replica Molding (REM), Micro-contact printing (µCP), Micro-transfer molding (µTM), and Micro-molding in capillaries (MIMIC) will be presented. The goal for this presentation is to impart a basic understanding of soft lithography for microfluidic applications as practiced in academia and industry.

Bio: Paul J Joseph received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Madras, India in 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he was a Visiting Scientist for the National Science Council of Taiwan at the National Tsing Hua University. From 2001, he was a Research faculty at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. His research focused towards the development of new sacrificial polymeric materials and its application in the field of Microelectronics, Microfluidics, and Microelectromechanical Systems. Dr. Joseph is currently a Principal Research Scientist and is also serving as an external user coordinator at the GT-Institute for Electronics & Nanotechnology and his current research interests are in Nano-biotechnology, Bio- MEMS, Microfluidics, and Biosensors’ application as Diagnostics and Detection Systems. Dr. Joseph’s original research work overall resulted in 85 publications, reports, conference presentations, trade publications, and 7 awarded US and international patents.

Join the Online Event April 29^th at this Link: https://bluejeans.com/205120439

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/IENexperts2

The other events are below....

May 7:     "Elionix ELS-G100 100 kV Electron Beam Lithography System – Enabling Nanotechnology" 

May 14:   "Photolithography at GT-IEN: An Overview of Processes and Equipment"

May 21:    "Laser Micromachining at GT-IEN"
May 28:    "Etching at GT-IEN: A Review of Processes and Equipment"

Devin K. Brown, Georgia Institute of Technology

Hang Chen, Ph.D., Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (GT-IEN)

"The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC) housed at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech is hosting a series of online technical seminars, from 11am - 12pm, open to the academic and industrial community with an interest in cleanroom fabrication and processing for materials, biological, and electronics research.

We invite you to join us at any of the lectures  by registering at the link at the bottom of the page. On the registration form, please check the seminars for which you are interested (you are not limited in the number) so that appropriate accompanying materials, if needed, are prepared."

Abstract: Photolithography has always been the most important technique in microelectronics fabrication. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photomask (also called an optical mask) to a photosensitive (that is, light-sensitive) chemical photoresist on the substrate, or it can be directly written with a UV-laser equipment. It provides precise control of the shape and size of the objects it creates and can create patterns over an entire surface cost-effectively. The Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) cleanroom provides various types of photolithography equipment to satisfy different processing needs. Each tool has its own unique characteristics and serves different purposes. In this seminar, a brief introduction to the equipment and patterning capabilities of the IEN will be presented. Common processing issues related to photolithography will also be discussed.

Bio: Dr. Hang Chen received his bachelor and master degrees in chemistry from Fudan University in Shanghai, China.  He obtained his doctorate, also in chemistry, from Georgia Tech in 2005 and was a post-doc at the Nanotechnology Research Center before joining the IEN as a Research Scientist in 2008. Currently, he is the process support manager at IEN. His research interests include chemically sensitive field-effect transistors, MEMS-CMOS device integration, and organic electronics. 

Join the Online Event May 14^th at this Link: https://bluejeans.com/883593994

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/IENexperts2

The other events are below....

May 21:    "Laser Micromachining at GT-IEN"

May 28:    "Etching at GT-IEN: A Review of Processes and Equipment"

Richard Shafer, Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (GT-IEN)

"The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC) housed at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech is hosting a series of online technical seminars, from 11am - 12pm, open to the academic and industrial community with an interest in cleanroom fabrication and processing for materials, biological, and electronics research.

We invite you to join us at any of the lectures  by registering at the link at the bottom of the page. On the registration form, please check the seminars for which you are interested (you are not limited in the number) so that appropriate accompanying materials, if needed, are prepared."

Abstract: The Institute of Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) Laser Micro-machining Laboratory has been in operation since 2014. The mission of the laser micro-machining laboratory is to provide the capability to laser machine parts to researchers from academic, industry and government agencies at an affordable rate. Come learn about what services the IEN micro-machining laboratory offers including, Nd:Ylf laser machining, deep ultraviolet (DUV) laser ablation, RF-excited CO2 laser machining and a new Femtosecond Laser Micromachining System . The lab houses laser cutting machines that operate at several wavelengths to allow machining on a broad spectrum of materials and also offers an Areosol Jet Printer that allows the printing of ink onto various substrates down to 10um line widths.

Bio: Richard Shafer was born in Bloomfield, New Jersey on August 6, 1952. He moved to Lexington, KY, in 1958 when his father took a position at the newly constructed IBM plant in Lexington. Richard studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Kentucky, and afterword’s worked in various fields. Shafer came to Georgia Tech in 1999 to work in the MSE department on an improved electron emitter source for deep space ion engines. He worked along with the JPL on a part of an ion engine for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) project. When Richard started working with Dr. Mark Allen in 2005 as a lab manager, part of his responsibilities were to run the laser micromachining operations that were commissioned to make MEMS devices. In 2015, the laser micromachining equipment became part of the shared facilities at the IEN. Mr. Shafer manages the Laser Micromachining Lab and external labs in room 148 of the Petit Building. Richard has his name on+ 12 published papers and over 50 acknowledgments of his work and assistance in other researcher’s publications.

Join the Online Event May 21^st at this Link: https://bluejeans.com/163726384

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/IENexperts2

The other events are below....

May 28:    "Etching at GT-IEN: A Review of Processes and Equipment"

Mikkel Thomas, Ph.D., Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (GT-IEN)

"The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC) housed at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech is hosting a series of online technical seminars, from 11am - 12pm, open to the academic and industrial community with an interest in cleanroom fabrication and processing for materials, biological, and electronics research.

We invite you to join us at any of the lectures  by registering at the link at the bottom of the page. On the registration form, please check the seminars for which you are interested (you are not limited in the number) so that appropriate accompanying materials, if needed, are prepared."

Abstract: Etching is one of the fundamental building blocks of microelectronic fabrication. Removing material through chemical or physical means is an essential skill found in most microelectronics laboratories. The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech offers a wide variety of tools and technologies to etch materials during a multitude of fabrication processes. Tools range from typical plasma enhanced etchers to vapor based etchers. With 15+ etch tools in the facility, IEN staff has the flexibility to configure each tool with a different selection of gases, which enables different etch capabilities and allow the IEN to segregate processes within the facility. In this seminar, a brief introduction to the tools and technologies available in the IEN cleanrooms will be presented. Common etching issues and concerns will also be discussed.

Bio: Dr. Mikkel Thomas has worked for the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology since 2008. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1997, a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1999 and a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Optoelectronics in 2008, all from the Georgia institute of Technology. Prior to his employment at Georgia Tech, Dr. Thomas worked at OptiComp Corporation located in Zephyr Cove, Nevada. His research at the company revolved around the development of a VCSEL based, integrated optical communication system for use in satellites and other aerospace applications. Since arriving at Georgia Tech, in the IEN, Dr. Thomas provides cleanroom processing support to the academic faculty and their graduate students. He also provides processing support and fabrication services for entities not directly affiliated with the institute. He is the current lab instructor for ChBE 4050.

Join the Online Event May 28^st at this Link: https://bluejeans.com/553388236

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/IENexperts2

Gabe Kwong, Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Georgia Institute of Technology

"Spring 2020 NanoFANS (Focusing on Advanced Nanobio- Systems) program will be offered in a weekly webinar format during the month of May. The focus of this event will be “Nanotechnology in Infectious Diseases (Diagnostics/Therapeutics).”

In the current global pandemic situation, infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with viruses such as, ebola, SARS-Cov, SARS-Cov-2 in particular, making global impact on healthcare and socio-economic development. The rapid development of drug resistance to currently available therapies and associated side effects leads to serious public health concern; hence, devising novel treatment strategies is of paramount importance. The application of nanotechnology in infectious diseases is fast-revolutionizing the biomedical field and the healthcare sector and has a potential to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases."

Abstract: The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the importance for rapid testing to track and contain the outbreak of infectious diseases. Current tests rely on RT-qPCR which requires a thermocycler and limits point-of-care (POC) use. POC tests that can amplify signals without specialized instrumentation could be deployed for rapid screening
and reach a broader segment of the population. Here we will highlight strategies for isothermal amplification to allow major classes of biomarkers – including nucleic acids, proteins, and cells – to be detected with minimal sample processing. Central to our strategy is taking advantage of enzymatic turnover, such as with proteases or Cas12a, to amplify detection signals. We aim to adapt these methods with paper-based assays to allow visualization of test results by eye. These strategies are generalization to a broad range of diseases to increase access to POC testing.

Bio: Dr. Kwong is an Associate Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. His lab pioneers transformative biotechnologies to address frontier clinical challenges in cancer, organ transplant rejection, and infectious diseases. His work has published in leading scientific journals and featured by the media including The Economist, NPR, BBC, and WGBH-2, Boston’s PBS station. Dr. Kwong earned his B.S. with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley, his Ph.D. from Caltech with Professor James R. Heath, and conducted postdoctoral studies at MIT with Professor Sangeeta N. Bhatia. In recognition of his work, Dr. Kwong has been honored with selective distinctions including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Dr. Kwong co-founded Glympse Bio in 2015, and holds 20+ issued or pending patents in biomedical technology.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/nanofanswebinar

Event Address: Webinar link will be sent to all those registered prior to the event

M.G. Finn, Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry; Georgia Institute of Technology

"Spring 2020 NanoFANS (Focusing on Advanced Nanobio- Systems) program will be offered in a weekly webinar format during the month of May. The focus of this event will be “Nanotechnology in Infectious Diseases (Diagnostics/Therapeutics).”

In the current global pandemic situation, infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with viruses such as, ebola, SARS-Cov, SARS-Cov-2 in particular, making global impact on healthcare and socio-economic development. The rapid development of drug resistance to currently available therapies and associated side effects leads to serious public health concern; hence, devising novel treatment strategies is of paramount importance. The application of nanotechnology in infectious diseases is fast-revolutionizing the biomedical field and the healthcare sector and has a potential to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases."

Abstract: Virus detection and immunization both require exquisite molecular recognition of virus-specific structures. Achieving such recognition is one of the chief functions of the immune system. Over the past three months, we have asked the mouse immune system to accomplish this, in a straightforward but intense series of experiments focused on the obvious coronavirus target: the “spike” protein that the pathogen uses to interact with and invade human cells. The general approach, platform design and manufacture, and current results will be described, along with a discussion of where we and others may go next in the rapid development of SARS-nCoV-2 detection and therapy.

Bio: M.G. Finn received his Ph.D. degree in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working with Prof. K.B. Sharpless, followed by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. J.P. Collman at Stanford University. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1988, where his group studied and developed a variety of transition metal-
mediated processes. Prof. Finn moved to the Department of Chemistry and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in 1998, and then to the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the School of Biology at Georgia Tech in 2013. His current interests include the use of virus particles as molecular and catalytic building blocks for vaccine and functional materials development, the discovery of click reactions for organic and materials synthesis, polyvalent interactions in drug targeting, and the use of evolution for the discovery of chemical function. He was the first recipient of the annual Scripps Outstanding Mentor Award, and is Editor-in- Chief of the journal ACS Combinatorial Science.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/nanofanswebinar

Event Address: Webinar link will be sent to all those registered prior to the event

Aniruddh Sarkar, Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Georgia Institute of Technology

"Spring 2020 NanoFANS (Focusing on Advanced Nanobio- Systems) program will be offered in a weekly webinar format during the month of May. The focus of this event will be “Nanotechnology in Infectious Diseases (Diagnostics/Therapeutics).”

In the current global pandemic situation, infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with viruses such as, ebola, SARS-Cov, SARS-Cov-2 in particular, making global impact on healthcare and socio-economic development. The rapid development of drug resistance to currently available therapies and associated side effects leads to serious public health concern; hence, devising novel treatment strategies is of paramount importance. The application of nanotechnology in infectious diseases is fast-revolutionizing the biomedical field and the healthcare sector and has a potential to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases."

Abstract: Current worldwide challenges in scaling COVID19 diagnosis underscore the need for developing inexpensive point-of-care diagnostics for infectious diseases. The heterogeneity of the disease – a large number of mild or asymptomatic cases coupled with the rapid degradation in symptoms in some patients – pose a challenge for the healthcare system and emphasize the need for developing predictive biomarkers of disease severity. We are harnessing microscale technology to solve these challenges by developing devices for high-throughput discovery and inexpensive electronic detection of biomarkers. Here, I will present our progress with these approaches – in the context of Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases – and end by outlining our current work in applying them to COVID19 diagnosis and prognostic monitoring.

Bio: Aniruddh Sarkar is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University where he leads the Micro/Nano Bioelectronics Lab. He was earlier a Research Fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard with research affiliations at Harvard Medical School and
at MIT. His research has evolved around the theme of exploiting unique physical phenomena that occur at the micrometer to nanometer length scales to develop devices and systems for solving various technological problems with a special focus on applications in biology and medicine. His earlier work, with Prof. Galit Alter (MGH/HMS) and Prof. Jongyoon Han (MIT), involved the development and application of microfabricated and nanofabricated devices to further the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Biology at MIT, developing microfluidic tools for single-cell analysis. He received his bachelors and master’s degrees, both in Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/nanofanswebinar

Event Address: Webinar link will be sent to all those registered prior to the event

Philip Santangelo, Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Georgia Institute of Technology

"Spring 2020 NanoFANS (Focusing on Advanced Nanobio- Systems) program will be offered in a weekly webinar format during the month of May. The focus of this event will be “Nanotechnology in Infectious Diseases (Diagnostics/Therapeutics).”

In the current global pandemic situation, infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with viruses such as, ebola, SARS-Cov, SARS-Cov-2 in particular, making global impact on healthcare and socio-economic development. The rapid development of drug resistance to currently available therapies and associated side effects leads to serious public health concern; hence, devising novel treatment strategies is of paramount importance. The application of nanotechnology in infectious diseases is fast-revolutionizing the biomedical field and the healthcare sector and has a potential to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases."

Abstract: RNA-based drugs for treating influenza and SARS-CoV-2 will be discussed. In particular, I’ll talk about why we make drugs based on synthetic mRNA and why RNA based drugs make sense for treating infections. In addition, I’ll discuss how my lab has been using mRNA-based Cas13 to target and mitigate influenza virus A (IAV) and SARS-CoV-2. I’ll discuss how we have made strides towards a pan-influenza treatment and show significant mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Last, I’ll talk about how we administer these drugs in vivo and preliminary data demonstrating function.

Bio: Dr. Philip J. Santangelo is a Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. He graduated from Polytechnic University (NY) in 1991 with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. In 1998, he obtained his Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of California at Davis under Dr. Ian Kennedy, on the development of laser-based diagnostics for multiphase reacting jets and droplet streams. Dr. Santangelo followed his Ph.D. with a postdoctoral fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California under Christopher Shaddix, and a position in industry, at Micron Optics, Inc., in Atlanta, Georgia. Next, Dr. Santangelo returned to academia as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a research faculty member at Georgia Tech under Dr. Gang Bao. In 2007 he started as an Assistant Professor in BME and was promoted with tenure in 2013 to Associate Professor and is a professor currently. Dr. Santangelo’s current research focuses on the development of imaging and detection technology for the study of RNA regulation and the pathogenesis of RNA viruses.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/nanofanswebinar

Event Address: Webinar link will be sent to all those registered prior to the event

Susan Thomas, Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Georgia Institute of Technology

"Spring 2020 NanoFANS (Focusing on Advanced Nanobio- Systems) program will be offered in a weekly webinar format during the month of May. The focus of this event will be “Nanotechnology in Infectious Diseases (Diagnostics/Therapeutics).”

In the current global pandemic situation, infectious diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with viruses such as, ebola, SARS-Cov, SARS-Cov-2 in particular, making global impact on healthcare and socio-economic development. The rapid development of drug resistance to currently available therapies and associated side effects leads to serious public health concern; hence, devising novel treatment strategies is of paramount importance. The application of nanotechnology in infectious diseases is fast-revolutionizing the biomedical field and the healthcare sector and has a potential to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases."

Abstract: The transport of fluids, biomolecules and cells to draining lymph nodes is facilitated by the concerted influence of the blood and lymphatic vascular systems. Our efforts to characterize the impact of these transport processes on disease progression, in particular by regulating immunity, as well as to develop novel therapeutic approaches for immunotherapy that mitigate these effects, will be described.

Bio: Susan Napier Thomas, Ph.D. holds the Woodruff Professorship and is an Associate Professor with tenure of Mechanical Engineering in the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she holds adjunct appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Biological Science and is a member of the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Prior to this appointment, she was a Whitaker postdoctoral scholar at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (one of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology) and received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering with an emphasis in Bioengineering cum laude from the University of California Los Angeles and her Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow from The Johns Hopkins University. For her contributions to the emerging field of immunoengineering, she has been honored with the 2018 Young Investigator Award from the Society for Biomaterials for "outstanding achievements in the field of biomaterials research" and the 2013 Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society "in recognition of high level of originality and ingenuity in a scientific work in biomedical engineering." Her interdisciplinary research program is supported by multiple awards on which she serves as PI from the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, amongst others.

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/nanofanswebinar

Event Address: Webinar link will be sent to all those registered prior to the event

Paul Joseph, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology

The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC) housed at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech is hosting a series of online technical seminars, from 11am - 12pm, open to the academic and industrial community with an interest in cleanroom fabrication and processing for materials, biological, and electronics research.

We invite you to join us at any of the lectures by registering at the link at the bottom of the page. On the registration form, please check the seminars for which you are interested (you are not limited in the number) so that appropriate accompanying materials, if needed, are prepared.

Abstract: The Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC) is one of 16 members of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), a network of academic user facilities serving the needs of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology by providing state-of-the-art equipment, staff expertise, and training resources. SENIC assists researchers with a broad range of micro and nanofabrication and characterization projects, such as nanostructures, nanoelectronics, MEMS, biological/chemical sensors and systems, biomaterials, photonics, materials growth and synthesis. This 30-minute webinar will provide an overview of NNCI and SENIC with a discussion of shared lab resources, external user services, and education/training programs followed by Q & A.  

Bio: Paul J Joseph received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Madras, India in 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he was a Visiting Scientist for the National Science Council of Taiwan at the National Tsing Hua University. From 2001, he was a Research faculty at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. His research focused towards the development of new sacrificial polymeric materials and its application in the field of Microelectronics, Microfluidics, and Microelectromechanical Systems. Dr. Joseph is currently a Principal Research Scientist and is also serving as an external user coordinator at the GT-Institute for Electronics & Nanotechnology and his current research interests are in Nano-biotechnology, Bio- MEMS, Microfluidics, and Biosensors’ application as Diagnostics and Detection Systems. Dr. Joseph’s original research work overall resulted in 85 publications, reports, conference presentations, trade publications, and 7 awarded US and international patents.

Join the Online Event April 22^nd at this link: https://bluejeans.com/283995794

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/IENExperts

The other events are below....

April 29:   "Soft Lithography Methods of Fabrication"

May 7:     "Elionix ELS-G100 100 kV Electron Beam Lithography System – Enabling Nanotechnology" 

May 14:   "Photolithography at GT-IEN: An Overview of Processes and Equipment"

May 21:    "Laser Micromachining at GT-IEN"
May 28:    "Etching at GT-IEN: A Review of Processes and Equipment"

Abstract:  TBA

Bio: TBA

We will reschedule Dr. Myers for Fall 2020

David Myers - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech

Abstract: Microsystems have dramatically changed how we interact with the world, from tracking fitness-related activity to improving transportation safety, yet microsystems have failed to live up to their potential in biomedical and clinical settings. In this talk, I review my efforts at addressing this issue and detail my journey from state of the art microsystem development to cutting edge biological and clinical research. Beginning with a discussion of advanced microsystem design, I highlight the exceptional capabilities of today’s microsystems, including some of my own work on high-performance automotive and ballistic sensors. I demonstrate that these microsystem tools have enormous potential in biomedical research and clinical settings, but that fully realizing the capabilities of this established field lies in designing new robust microsystems capable of answering clinically relevant problems. As a case study, I examine the creation of the platelet contraction cytometer, a tool that has led to important insights into our understanding of the process of hemostasis. By applying a microsystems-based toolset to a challenging biomedical question, I show how we have started to better define the mechanical behavior of clots, which is pathologically linked to bleeding and thrombosis. Moreover, I discuss how our microsystems-based approach may represent an entirely new class of biophysical biomarker for bleeding that is independent of existing tests. Finally, I conclude with how quantitatively defining the platelet has led to interesting new insights into biomechanical structures.

Bio: David R. Myers is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. David’s varied interests have fueled an unusual educational background that fuses engineering, microsystem design, biology, and clinical research. David received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, under the tutelage of one of the early microsystems pioneers, Albert P. Pisano, PhD. Driven by a desire to see new types of sensors in the clinic, David undertook a postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical and clinical research with Wilbur A. Lam, MD, PhD, in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Working at the intersection of these fields, David has authored or contributed to publications in Nature Materials, Nature Communications, PNAS, and Blood, and is the recipient of an NIH R21 Trailblazer Award as well as an NIH K25 Award.

This Nano@Tech lecture is co-sponsored by the Micro-Physiological Systems Group at Georgia Tech. For more information on this research interest group, please contact David Mertz: drmertz@gatech.edu

The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology Presents E-Beam Lithography

In this seminar participants will learn about current and emerging techniques in E-Beam lithography for various research disciplines.

Course Schedule with Approximate Times:

•12:00pm - 1:00pm "Forward Looking Applications andResearch with Electron Beam Lithography" - Devin K. Brown: Senior Research Engineer, Georgia Tech

•1:00pm - 2:00pm "Elionix Electron Beam LithographyTechnology" - Taichi Suhara: Technical Support Engineer, ELIONIX Inc., Japan

Pizza Lunch Provided to Registered Attendees

To register for this class please use the following link:
https://tinyurl.com/elitho2020

For More Information, please contact: Devin K. Brown
devin.brown@ien.gatech.edu
404.385.5370