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In this talk, I will discuss how bioelectronics can be uniquely positioned—as ubiquitous biomarker data harvesters—to enable personalized medicine. Aligned with this vision, I will present the central theme of my research program: developing an ecosystem of bioanalytical platforms that autonomously measure biomarker molecules in various biofluids to provide insight into complex and dynamic physiological systems such as our body.
In our approach, we develop micro/nanoscale actuation and sensing interfaces and augment them with system-level microfluidic/electronic functionalities by leveraging our device fabrication and system integration methodologies. I will illustrate how such efforts have converged to create new classes of autonomous wearable and mobile technologies that enable biomarker data harvesting with orders of magnitude higher sampling rates. Specifically, I will present: 1) a series of bioanalytical smartwatches that can be scaled across the general population to provide noninvasive proxy measures of a spectrum of circulating biomarkers, including metabolites, electrolytes, nutrients, hormones, and pharmaceuticals, and 2) a digital microfluidic technology, namely ferrobotic system, which deploys a network of addressable miniature magnets, as robotic agents ("ferrobots"), to perform massively parallelized and sequential micro/nanoliter-level bioanalytical operations.
I will conclude by discussing how through convergent and multidisciplinary efforts (including engineering, medicine, and data science), we can harness such technologies to unravel complex physiological systems and catalyze the transition from point-of-lab and point-of-care testing to (near)continuous point-of-person monitoring, thus creating a new era of personalized medicine.
Professor Sam Emaminejad is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UCLA, the founder and director of the Interconnected & Integrated Bioelectronics Lab (I²BL), and an elected senior member of the National Academy of Inventors. Sam received his BASc (2009) and MS/PhD (2011/2014) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and Stanford University, respectively. Prior to joining UCLA, he was a joint-postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley and Stanford School of Medicine. Professor Emaminejad has received numerous honors and awards, including the NSF CAREER, NSF Smart and Connected Health (SCH), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) scholarship, Microsoft Merit, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s NARSAD Young Investigator award, PhRMA Research Starter Grant (Translational Medicine and Therapeutics Program), PATHS-UP Faculty Innovation, Young Alumni Achievement Medal (University of Waterloo), and the Innovation Fund. Also, he has been awarded a “Distinguished Young Investigator Award” for leading a multi-center program on remote patient monitoring with UCLA, Intermountain Healthcare and Stanford School of Medicine. Professor Emaminejad’s research has been featured by the National Science Foundation and National Academy of Engineering and widely reported by various media outlets, including Nature, Science, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, etc.
