Wireless Human-inspired Bioelectronic Network for Chronic Disease Management

60% of Americans live with at least one chronic disease. These diseases and associated comorbidities are now the leading causes of death in the United States. Effective management of complex chronic diseases requires body-wide, long-term, accurate, and continuous monitoring of multiple physiological signals to precisely determine the pathological state. These physiological signal monitoring can dramatically reduce the demand of physician visiting and increase patients’ engagement and treatment adherence rate. The ultimate technology platform for such kind of monitoring would be a close-looped wireless bioelectronic network. In this talk, I will discuss my research efforts on building such wireless bioelectronic network. First, I will describe a body area sensor network technology that utilizes novel wireless hybridization strategy to integrate soft on-skin devices with rigid high-performance silicon electronics to bypass the mechanical modulus mismatch. Then complex stretchable circuits are built to integrate multiple analog sensors into one soft skin sensing sticker. Next, I will introduce a smart bandage that can accelerate and monitor the wound healing process. Finally, I will switch the topic to triboelectric nanogenerator, an emerging technology for mechanical energy harvesting, to provide alternative power supply for the on-body network. Overall, the bioelectronic network technology platform could assess multiple health outcomes and treatment responses to various chronic diseases. Ultimately, this technology will help to reduce chronic disease burden, lower medical costs and provide a better quality of life for patients.

Dr. Simiao Niu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University. Before Rutgers, he was a health technologies hardware system engineer at Apple Inc. He received his postdoctoral training in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, under the mentorship of Prof. Zhenan Bao. He received his PhD degree in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in May 2016, under the mentorship of Prof. Zhong Lin Wang. He earned his master of science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2015 and his bachelor of engineering degree in the Institute of Microelectronics at Tsinghua University in 2011 with the highest honors and outstanding undergraduate thesis award. He has received several prestigious honors and awards, including 2020-2022 Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Cross-Field, Research.com 2022 Rising Star of Science Award, Apple Special Recognition Award, and Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation Award, etc. His research interests include wearable electronics, bioelectronics and biosensing systems, soft electronics, soft robotics, and energy harvesting technologies towards self-powered systems.