Medical Engineering Special Seminar

The emerging biotechnologies such as CRISPR-CAS9 genome editing tool and CAR T-Cell immunotherapy have paved our way toward precision medicine and oncology. Yet there still lacks a complete understanding of tumor genomic heterogeneity, inefficient monitoring of treatment responses as well as tumor recurrence, and the knowledge in forming therapeutic strategies. Therefore, silicon-based biomedical devices offering rapid analysis at high precision and accuracy with ease of use in an extreme compact platform are highly desirable to empower and accelerate the research in the fields, with an end goal of being applied toward patient care. In this talk, I will first discuss a CMOS spectrometer at GHz frequencies using near-field sensing for single-cell biophysical analysis in high-throughput Lab-on-Chip flow cytometry setting. The aim is to enable large-scale studies on the wideband electromagnetic signatures at cellular and molecular levels to open its way for real-time and label-free sensing. I will present the techniques for enabling highly sensitive (noise floor < 1aFrms) dielectric sensors with experiments on large-scale cellular characterization. In addition, the mechanical property (elasticity) of the cells is studied in the same platform by incurring deformation using microfluidic hydrodynamic stretching. Next, I will present two low-power sensor designs for continuous monitoring of cardiovascular diseases to enable precision health, which emphasizes on preventive care through early detection. In the third part, I will discuss the challenges in precision measurements at millimeter-wave frequencies and present an electronic calibration (E-Cal) algorithm using CMOS transistors. Such a calibration concept can potentially be generalized in various bioinstrumentation. Last, I will highlight my collaborative research on medical imaging and flexible electronics, and conclude my talk with current research and future directions.

Biography: Jun-Chau Chien received his Ph.D. degree in EECS from University of California, Berkeley, in 2015. He is currently a post-doctoral research associate at Stanford University. He has held industrial positions at InvenSense, Xilinx, and HMicro working on mixed-signal integrated circuits for inertial sensors, wireline/wireless transceivers, and ECG sensors. Dr. Chien is the recipient of the 2007 International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) Silkroad Award, the co-recipient of 2010 IEEE Jack Kilby Award for ISSCC Outstanding Student Paper, the 2014 Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Graduate Fellowship for Medical Applications, the 2014 Solid-State Circuit Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award, and the 2014 UC Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. He is broadly interested in innovative biotechnology for point-of-care diagnostics and medical imaging with emphasis on silicon-based approaches. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=r5b2ufgAAAAJ&hl=en