Neurological conditions affect one in six people, imposing significant health, economic and societal burden. Bioelectronic medicine aims to restore or replace neurological function with the help of implantable electronic devices. Unfortunately, significant technological limitations prohibit these devices from reaching patients at scale, as implants are bulky, require invasive implantation procedures, elicit a pronounced foreign body response, and show poor treatment specificity and off-target effects. Over the past decade, new devices made using methods from microelectronics industry have been shown to overcome these limitations. Recent literature provides powerful demonstrations of thin film implants that are miniaturised, ultra-conformal, stretchable, multiplexed, integrated with different sensors and actuators, bioresorbable, and minimally invasive. I will discuss the state-of-the-art of these new technologies and the barriers than need to be overcome to reach patients at scale.
Professor George Malliaras is the Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. He leads the Bioelectronics Laboratory, an interdisciplinary group of scientists, engineers and clinicians who translate advances in electronics to better tools for healthcare. Professor George Malliaras received a BS from the Aristotle University, Greece, a PhD from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and did a postdoc at the IBM Almaden Research Center, USA. Before joining Cambridge, he was a faculty member at Cornell University in the USA, where he also served as the Director of the Cornell NanoScale Facility, and at the School of Mines of St. Etienne in France. His research has been recognized with awards from the European Academy of Sciences (Blaise Pascal Medal), the Materials Research Society (Mid-Career Researcher Award), the New York Academy of Sciences (Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists), the US National Science Foundation (Faculty Early Career Development Award), and DuPont (Young Professor Award). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Linköping (Sweden), elected Fellow of the Materials Research Society and of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is a member of the Academia Europaea and of the European Academy of Sciences. He serves as a Deputy Editor of Science Advances.
Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.
