Bioelectronics
Department of Microelectronics

News and Agenda Archive

News

Portrait of Medical Delta Professor Johan Frijns (appointed at EEMCS, Bioelectronics group)

  • Friday, 16 February 2024

Portrait of Medical Delta Professor Johan Frijns 

More than 800,000 people in the Netherlands are hard of hearing. They suffer so much from hearing loss that it limits their daily lives. Prof. Dr. ir. Johan Frijns treats people with hearing loss, conducts research on hearing implants, and gladly shares his knowledge about electrical stimulation of the nervous system. "We shouldn't want to reinvent everything in every little corner. What we learn in one place, we can also use in another."

Johan Frijns is a professor of Otology and Physics of Hearing in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at LUMC. He heads the Center for Audiology and Hearing Implants Leiden (CAHIL) and the Cochlear Implant Rehabilitation Centre Leiden (CIRCLE). He was recently appointed as a Medical Delta professor with a position at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science at TU Delft.

Read more: Portrait and video Johan Frijns: “When a deaf child suddenly hears and learns to talk, this also has a huge impact on the people around him.” | Medical Delta

 

Artikel AD tinnitus

  • Thursday, 11 January 2024

Onze hersencellen werken als elektronische netwerken en daar kan ik veel mee”, aldus professor Wouter Serdijn van de Sectie Bio-elektronica van de TU Delft. Serdijn zoekt naar een oplossing voor tinnitus. © Thierry Schut

Source (paywall): https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/elektrotechnisch-ingenieur-en-neurochirurg-denken-oplossing-voor-tinnitus-gevonden-te-hebben~abb033f4/

Read the full story here: Tinnitus.

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Andrew Webb wins Huibregtsen Award for Affordable MRI Scanners

  • Tuesday, 31 October 2023

High field MRI expert, Professor Andrew Webb of the Microelectronics department, and his Ugandan collaborator, Johnes Obungoloch, have been awarded the 2023 Huibregtsen Prize. Their notable achievement is the creation of an affordable, portable, and long-lasting MRI device tailored for brain imaging in developing nations.

Webb's team introduced a 'low-field MRI scanner' that boasts ease of transportation, maintenance, and ecological sustainability. Ever better, Webb’s new device is priced at just 1% of the typical MRI system. The brain scans generated by their MRI are instrumental in diagnosing curable diseases in underdeveloped regions, with the first model already operational in Uganda.

Highlighting its distinctive nature, the jury commended the initiative for merging top-tier technology development with suitability for developing regions. They also lauded the emphasis on knowledge dissemination and instruction.

The Huibregtsen Prize, founded in 2005 by The Evening of Science & Society Foundation board, is an annual award recognizing pioneering research projects with profound societal implications.
The accolade was handed over by the departing Minister of Education, Culture, and Science, Robbert Dijkgraaf, on 9 October at Pieterskerk, Leiden. Professor Webb was granted a €25,000 check and a bronze artwork from Wil van der Laan. Meanwhile, Obungoloch tuned into the event via a live stream from Uganda. In addition to the monetary prize and artwork, the duo also earned a workshop at the Lorentz Center in Leiden.

 

Gaat dit apparaatje tinnitus genezen?

  • Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Een constante piep of ruis in je oren - om gek van te worden. Toch is er geen genezing voor mensen met tinnitus. Nog niet, want elektrotechnisch ingenieur Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft) laat het er niet bij zitten. Hij werkt aan een apparaatje dat tinnitus moet verhelpen. Hoe? Dat hoor je in deze aflevering van de podcast van de Universiteit van Nederland.

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Vacancy for a Bioelectronics Support Engineer

  • Friday, 6 October 2023

Join our dynamic team at Delft University of Technology's Section Bioelectronics in the Department of Microelectronics! As a Bioelectronics Support Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in enabling groundbreaking neuroscientific research and the development of cutting-edge neurotechnology applications.

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Our Paper Awarded at the IEEE MetroAeroSpace 2023

  • Wednesday, 21 June 2023

We are proud to announce that our paper, "Experimental Evaluation of Radar Waveforms for Spectral Coexistence Using the PARSAX Radar", the result of our research collaboration with the team from the University of Naples “Federico II”, has been recognized as the most outstanding paper of the Special Session on Metrology for Radar Systems presented at IEEE MetroAeroSpace 2023 (the award has been sponsored by MDPI Remote Sensing Journal). The paper was acknowledged for its experimental demonstration of radar operability in spectrally dense environments through innovative waveform design.

The award recognition will soon be posted on the official conference website.

SAFE/ProRISC conference 2023 in Delft

  • Monday, 1 May 2023

On 10-11 July 2023 we have the SAFE/ProRISC conference in Delft. This is an annual conference rotating around the TU's in The Netherlands.

SAFE is dedicated to devices and technology, and ProRISC to circuits and systems. You can find more information on the website:

https://www.tudelft.nl/prorisc-safe

For PhD students, this is a great opportunity to meet colleagues from the other TU's, and also have fun. We only require an abstract and poster, so there is no problem with prior publication if you want to present the work at an international conference.

Graphene electrodes developed by ME researchers on Neurotech reports

  • Wednesday, 5 April 2023

The article "Multilayer CVD graphene electrodes using a transfer-free process for the next generation of optically transparent and MRI-compatible neural interfaces", published in Microsystems & Nanoengineering (Nature), is featured in the February 2023 issue of Neurotech Reports. 

The electrodes in the study were fabricated at the Else Kooi Lab and are the product of a longstanding collaboration between the groups of Sten Vollebregt and Vasso Giagka. The article was selected to be featured on the journal's webpage in October 2022.

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Webinar with Dr. Vasso Giagka "Translational Research for Neural Implants"

  • Tuesday, 4 April 2023

This webinar will be hosted live and available on-demand

Monday, May 8, 2023, at 17:00

Implantable neurotechnologies already treat various disorders, including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, depression, and pain. As researchers develop new materials and technologies, the therapeutic potential of neural implants for other diseases and conditions grows. 

In this webinar brought to you by The Scientist, John Donoghue and Vasiliki (Vasso) Giagka will present their latest findings on applying clinical and technical developments to create new implantable devices for treating neurological disorders. 

Topics to be covered 

  • Successes, challenges, and opportunities for brain computer interfaces (BCIs)
    • Accomplishments in human implantable BCIs over the last decades
    • Current capabilities for movement and communication
    • Challenges for clinically useful BCIs as medical devices
  • Miniaturized and selective active neural interfaces
    • Active neural implants for bioelectronic medicine
    • Miniaturization of active neural implants
    • Multimodal neural interfaces

Register through the link

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Squeaking, humming, buzzing. The discomfort of tinnitus

  • Wednesday, 8 February 2023

A few years ago, the Bioelectronics group (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science) joined an international project on tinnitus called Tinnitus House. Delta phoned TU Delft principal investigator Professor Wouter Serdijn to hear about the progress.

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2022 4TU.NIRICT Community Day, November 14

  • Thursday, 20 October 2022

Identified are 3 themes around which we would like to bring NIRICT researchers together to discuss and to explore per theme the opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. The themes are related to the societal challenges we are currently facing and require interdisciplinary effort in order to be addressed effectively. We believe that productive discussions during the event could be instrumental in forming new research lines, but also project consortia around various national R&D investment programs addressing the knowledge and innovation agenda’s (KIAs) of the Netherlands (https://www.topsectoren.nl/missiesvoordetoekomst).


Themes of the day:
• Health and ICT People live longer, more healthcare is needed. Work pressure in healthcare is rapidly increasing. More data is collected by smart devices. How can the ICT community contribute solutions to keep our society healthy?
• Energy and ICT The current explosion of the energy prices shows that we are facing an unstable situation with respect to energy production and consumption. We produce more solar energy on one hand and consume more energy due to air conditioners and electric cars. We need smart solutions both in production and consumption. Moreover, due to its significant share in energy consumption, ICT systems from the end user devices to power-hungry data centers need to become more energy efficient.
• Agriculture and ICT We just had another summer with extreme heat waves and droughts. The climate changes we are facing have tremendous consequences for agriculture. The population is growing and the pressure on nature is increasing. What smart solutions do we see to deal with the challenges to keep our planet healthy and at the same time to keep the food production in line with the population growth?
The Community Day starts at 12:30hrs with a walk-in lunch. At 13:30hrs the official part will start with a number of short presentations, followed by several parallel sessions regarding the three themes of the day. You can indicate your preference on the registration form. Afterwards there will be a networking drink from 17:00-18:00hrs.

It would be great to welcome many of you on November 14th, because together we strengthen the ICT community of The Netherlands, so join us for the 4TU.NIRICT Community Day 2022, November 14, in Van der Valk Hotel Utrecht and register here by November 6, 2022.
Your data will only be used for registration and will be discarded within one week after the 4TU.NIRICT Community Day. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us: m.mommers@tue.nl

Sounds good: treating depression with ultrasound

  • Wednesday, 14 September 2022

Physicians are desperate to find new and effective treatment options for chronic pain and depression. Tiago Costa is developing a novel targeted neuro-modulation treatment for depression, using focused ultrasound. His goal is to treat only brain areas that need attention, leaving other parts of the brain undisturbed.

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Vasso Giagka on the Neural Implant Podcast

  • Wednesday, 14 September 2022

Neural Implant podcast - the people behind Brain-Machine Interface revolutions: Vasiliki Giagka on Neural Interface Packaging and why it's the most important

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Technology for health: Keynote Wouter Serdijn en Christos Strydis at the Opening of the Academic Year

  • Monday, 12 September 2022

In Delft and Rotterdam, Wouter Serdijn and Christos Strydis are collaborating on a network of sensors and stimulators for the body. By picking up signals and sending the brain a rapid wake-up call, they hope to be able to predict and prevent epileptic seizures.

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Gravity grant awarded to research on brain interactions

  • Tuesday, 3 May 2022

The goal of this research is to develop principles, devices and methods to take these interactions into account and thus understand more about brain disorders, as well as moods, emotions and compulsions.

The research project is called 'The Dutch Brain Interfaces Initiative' and is led by researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen. TU Delft will contribute to the development of computer models, and microfabrication technology for the development and validation of closed-loop control for neural prostheses. These prostheses can give us back lost senses and control, enabling us to bypass injuries and treat an unprecedented range of brain disorders, restoring a better quality of life for deaf, blind, paralyzed and mentally ill people. 

Ultimate applications of the multi-year research include the use of Deep Brain Stimulation on patients with motor and psychiatric disorders, the development of Brain-Computer interfaces that enable communication for people who cannot speak and the deployment of visual implants for the visually impaired and blind. Frans van der Helm and Wouter Serdijn are the leaders of the Delft research project. Frans van der Helm: 'The human brain is the ultimate technical challenge for engineers. It is great to be able to use our technical background and technical capabilities to contribute to a better understanding of, and better interaction with, the human brain.'

The Dutch Brain Interfaces Initiative is the combination of a platform with computer, software and hardware elements, aimed at facilitating closed-loop manipulations in the long term, and brain monitoring in a naturalistic environment, with a neuroscience research program with 3 main objectives: to increase the understanding of the general principles of brain dynamics, to develop strategies to influence, restore or improve those dynamics and the cognitive function they support, and to understand the neural basis of behavior under naturalistic conditions.

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Project proposal UPSIDE, successful in the EU call EIC Pathfinder challenge

  • Friday, 22 April 2022

The multi-disciplinary and international consortium led by Dr. Tiago Costa, includes ME department PIs Dr. Dante Muratore and Prof. Dr. Ir. Wouter Serdijn, and partners from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the USA. With a total budget of 4.2 M€, the consortium will use the combined expertise in bioelectronics, brain-machine interfaces, focused ultrasound, neurobiology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry to achieve a technological breakthrough towards a personalized treatment for depression.

Project description:

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting 300 million people with a lifetime prevalence of 15%. Approximately one third of all MDD patients fail to respond to currently established treatments based on medication and psychotherapy, thus falling into the category of Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD) patients. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (tRMS), Vagus nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulation (DBS) and transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) still show poor spatial resolution (ECT, tRMS, tFUS) or low network coverage (VNS, DBS), with average remission rates in clinical trials still lower than 30 %. Apart from the existing stimulation hurdles, reliable biomarkers for depression are needed as a diagnostic tool, and, in the case of neuromodulation-based treatments, to determine the stimulation efficacy and allow for personalized treatment. The UPSIDE project aims to overcome the limitations above by developing a hybrid epidural brain interface (EBI) for high-precision ultrasound neuromodulation (eFUS) and high-fidelity neural recording (eREC) for the personalized treatment of depression.

Happy Secretaries Day!!!

  • Thursday, 21 April 2022

Our congratulations and best wishes!

NWA-ORC project "OBSeRVeD" with co-applicant Sten Vollebregt and Frans Widdershoven granted

  • Wednesday, 23 March 2022

A total of 28 consortia will work in interdisciplinary teams on research that will bring both scientific and societal breakthroughs within reach. The entire knowledge chain and societal organisations, including public as well as private parties, will work closely together in these projects. The projects have received funding in the third round of the Dutch Research Agenda programme Research along Routes by Consortia (NWA-ORC).

The ME department plays a lead role in one of the funded consortia:

OBSeRVeD - Odour Based Selective Recognition of Veterinary Diseases

Coordinator: dr. ir. C.A.J. (Cas) Damen - Saxion Hogeschool
Affiliated TU Delft researchers:  dr. ir. Sten Vollebregt (WP-lead) and prof. dr. ir. Frans Widdershoven, EEMCS faculty,  dr. Monique van der Veen – AS faculty

When chickens in a farm become infected or have parasites, specific odours are produced. A cross-disciplinary team will combine innovative sensors, affinity layers, and machine learning to develop and test an electronic nose. This sensitive system can recognize a fingerprint of Volatile Organic Compounds and thus recognise specific diseases at an early stage, when (preventive) measures are most effective. In this project, veterinary health, industry, science professionals and societal organisations will collaborate towards developing a practically applicable poultry health monitoring system to improve chicken and public health, general welfare and reduce antibiotics/chemicals use and the environmental impact of livestock farming.

Lees meer: TU Delft news

Or in English on the NWO website: NWO news

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Neurotechnology development needs a multi-disciplinary environment to flourish

  • Tuesday, 8 March 2022

A blogpost in Open Neurosurgey by Dr. Vasiliki (Vasso) Giagka, PhD, Assistant Professor of Bioelectronics, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

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TU Delft start wereldwijd onderzoek naar oorsuizen (tinnitus)

  • Monday, 7 March 2022

Wereldwijd onderzoek naar oorsuizen (tinnitus)

Veel mensen hebben last van een continu geluid in hun hoofd. Tinnitus heet dat. Omdat er eigenlijk nog te weinig bekend is over de oorzaken, is er een wereldwijd onderzoek gestart onder de noemer ‘Tinnitus House’. De hoop is dat er uiteindelijk een remedie wordt gevonden.

Tinnitus wordt ook wel oorsuizen genoemd. Al is die laatste omschrijving een understatement, want de geluiden die sommige mensen horen zijn vergelijkbaar met een vrachttrein die door je hoofd raast. Tinnitus hoor je in een stille ruimte, maar ook met oordoppen op. Dan lijkt het alsof er toch geluid is, maar die waarneming komt van binnenuit. Die geluiden heb je in alle vormen: van zacht tot hard, van hoog tot laag, van continu tot af en toe, in één oor of in beide oren.

Eén op de drie volwassenen ervaart in het dagelijks leven wel eens een duidelijke toon in een oor gedurende een aantal seconden. Ook de zogeheten ‘disco-tinnitus’ is je wellicht bekend: als je oren een tijdlang zijn blootgesteld aan veel lawaai, is er eenmaal in de stilte een ruis of fluittoon te horen in je oren. Uiteindelijk komt hierna gelukkig bij de meeste mensen het gehoorsysteem weer tot rust en dan verdwijnen de geluiden. Echter, veel blootstelling aan harde geluiden kan ertoe leiden dat de ruis of fluittoon permanent te horen blijft.

Overgevoeligheid voor geluid

Heb je last van een van onderstaande vormen van overgevoeligheid voor geluid? Dan kun je ook last hebben van tinnitus.

  • Misofonie. Extreme hekel aan specifieke geluiden, zoals bijvoorbeeld blaffende honden of smakgeluiden.

  • Hyperacusis. Mensen die hieraan lijden zijn overgevoelig voor vaak hoge harde geluiden die als onaangenaam en pijnlijk worden ervaren. Denk aan gillende kinderen, of een alarm dat afgaat.

  • Phonofobie: Hardnekkige, abnormale en niet-realistische angst voor geluid. Deze mensen zijn bang dat normale geluiden hun gehoor beschadigen

Tinnitus is zelden te behandelen

Wat iemand met tinnitus dus hoort, zijn schijngeluiden. Die ontstaan doordat het gehoororgaan of de zenuwbanen – zonder dat er geluiden zijn – signalen doorgeven die in de hersenen de betekenis ‘geluid’ krijgen. Waardoor ontstaat zoiets?

  • Beschadigingen in het laatste gedeelte van het gehoororgaan of veranderingen in de zenuwbanen of hersenen kunnen een oorzaak zijn.
  • Ook spiertjes rond het oor die zich samentrekken of problemen in het middenoor kunnen voor tinnitusklachten zorgen.
  • Andere mogelijke oorzaken zijn afwijkingen aan de bloedvaten in het hoofd en een hoge bloeddruk, die een kloppend of tikkend geluid in het ritme van de hartslag veroorzaken

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT)

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) is één van de weinige wetenschappelijk onderbouwde therapieën voor tinnitus en overgevoeligheid voor geluid. Je leert het hinderlijke geluid van het oorsuizen naar de achtergrond te drukken door het als een normaal geluid te beschouwen waarmee gewoon te leven is. Het maakt gebruik van het feit dat je hersenen ook in staat zijn om bijvoorbeeld het zoemende geluid van een koelkast te negeren.

Deze therapie wordt onder andere aangeboden bij audiciens als Beter Horen en Schoonenberg Hoorsupport.

Gehoorverlies bij tinnitus

Naast de irritante geluiden hoort bij tinnitus ook vaak gehoorverlies. En nog vervelender: tinnitus is helaas zelden te behandelen met geneesmiddelen of een medische ingreep. Klachten kunnen wel wat worden verminderd door de aandacht voor de geluiden in het hoofd te verplaatsen naar bijvoorbeeld andere geluiden.

Hoortoestel met tinnitusmaskering

Er zijn hoortoestellen op de markt die een ruis of andere prettige geluiden genereren, zoals bijvoorbeeld geruis van de zee. Heb je behalve tinnitus ook last van behoorlijk gehoorverlies boven een bepaalde waarde (de audicien kan dit meten), dan kan dit een uitkomst zijn. Een nadeel van de maskering, is dat je hierdoor niet went aan je eigen tinnitusgeluid.

Wereldwijd tinnitusonderzoek

Omdat er eigenlijk nog te weinig bekend is over tinnitus is er een wereldwijd onderzoek gestart onder de noemer ‘Tinnitus House’. Dit onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd door de Stichting BrainInnovations onder supervisie van de Technische Universiteit Delft in samenwerking met de Universiteit van Regensburg (Duitsland), Trinity College Dublin (Ierland) en de University of Otago (Nieuw-Zeeland) en mede gefinancierd door de Stichting TinnitusFree. Het doel is om het tinnitusonderzoek een nieuwe dimensie te geven door (big) data-analyse systematisch te testen met klinische trials.

Meewerken aan het onderzoek naar tinnitus?

Heb je last van tinnitus en wil je meewerken aan dit onderzoek? Op de site van Tinnitus House is meer informatie te vinden over tinnitus en over dit onderzoek. Ook kun je je daar abonneren op hun nieuwsbrief.

Meer informatie over tinnitus vind je ook in het boek Eerste hulp bij oorsuizen van Olav Wagenaar.

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Tiago da Costa appointed as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

  • Monday, 28 February 2022

The primary goal of the journal is to bridge the unique scientific and technical activities of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society to a wide variety of related areas such as:

  • Bioelectronics
  • Implantable and wearable electronics like cochlear and retinal prosthesis, motor control, etc.
  • Biotechnology sensor circuits, integrated systems, and networks
  • Micropower imaging technology
  • BioMEMS
  • Lab-on-chip Bio-nanotechnology
  • Organic Semiconductors
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Genomics and Proteomics
  •  Neuromorphic Engineering
  • Smart sensors
  • Low power micro- and nanoelectronics
  • Mixed-mode system-on-chip
  • Wireless technology
  • Gene circuits and molecular circuits
  • System biology
  • Brain science and engineering: such as neuro-informatics, neural prosthesis, cognitive engineering, brain computer interface
  • Healthcare: information technology for biomedical, epidemiology, and other related life science applications.               

Home | IEEE CAS (ieee-cas.org) 

More information on Tiago https://www.tmlcosta.com/

Dante Muratore appointed Associate Editor for TCAS-2

  • Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Dante Muratore, assistant professor in the Bioelectronics group, was recently appointed as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II.

Congratulations, Dante!

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Heart rhythm expert Natasja de Groot: ‘Every heart is different’

  • Friday, 4 February 2022

The electrodes in the display cabinet show the technical developments over the last 20 years. The oldest one looks like a kind of small shower head from which four cables emerge, ending in computer mouse-sized plugs. Natasja de Groot used it during her PhD research on heart rhythm disorders in Leiden. The newest electrode is a wafer-thin strip to which three metres of multilayer flat cable are attached to read out the 192 channels simultaneously. The cable was made at TU Delft in the Bioelectronics group of Prof. Wouter Serdijn (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science).

Full article;  Heart rhythm expert Natasja de Groot: 'Every heart is different’ (tudelft.nl)

Altijd geld bij de hand, met een betaalchip onder je huid

  • Friday, 17 December 2021

In de onstuitbare opmars van het contactloos betalen zet een Pools bedrijf de volgende stap: een betaalchip onder de huid, geen apparaat meer nodig. Wie wil dat? Brigitte heeft er al een. De technologie is echter niet wereldschokkend, zegt Wouter Serdijn, hoogleraar bio-elektronica in Delft. Artikel in de Volkskrant, d. 17 december 2021, door Enith Vlooswijk.

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Portret series new Medical Delta professors - Wouter Serdijn

  • Thursday, 9 December 2021

For people with heart, nerve and brain disorders, bioelectronic medicine can make a significant difference. Professor Wouter Serdijn works on these tiny devices. He is a professor at TU Delft and, thanks to Medical Delta, now at Erasmus MC as well. "Technical disciplines often use objective measures, while no two people are the same. It is therefore important to include the subjective side in the design."

In the video below, Wouter Serdijn tells about his Medical Delta professorship:

 

"I have always worked together a lot, but with my appointment in Rotterdam this has become more formalised," says Serdijn. "I now also have the 'right' to walk around there and am part of the information flow. This structure fits in well with how I am used to working. Not starting from existing pigeonholes, but working together at an umbrella level. Medical Delta is a bundle of great people, both technical, medical and clinical-academic. The engineer, medical scientist and therapist form a triangle. Together they can develop what is best for a patient."

How did your interest in the medical field emerge?

"For my graduation project, I worked on hearing aids together with a technology company. I experienced that something that met the technical specifications perfectly, could be totally unpleasant to listen to, and thus collided with the boundaries of the technical domain. Technical disciplines often assume objective measures, while no two people are the same and an individual person will be different tomorrow. It is therefore important to include the subjective side in the design.

How do you contribute to medical science with your knowledge of bioelectronics?

"I do not know exactly how the body works, but I can help measure, examine and control it. I can read and write nerve tracts. One example we are working on is helping people with paralysis regain their posture when sitting or standing and a rudimentary form of walking. This can now be done mainly with a wheelchair or other aids. But I want to know how we can re-energize their own muscles that are still intact but no longer controlled. How can we restore the connection between the brain and muscles? We are about to start clinical trials for this.

I also want to contribute to implantable technology that someone can wear invisibly as much as possible. For example, the so-called cochlear implant. This device enables a deaf person to hear and therefore to develop speech. But these implants still have an external part. You have to take it off when you go swimming or take a shower, for example, and then you don't hear anything anymore. I want to improve that. Though you can engage in conversations with this implant, you cannot listen to music. That can even be a very unpleasant experience. I think that is a shame; not being able to enjoy music is truly a loss. I want to tackle that as well."

How do you see Medical Delta in the future?

"In ten years, Medical Delta will be a scientific plateau. With connections and prestige in The Netherlands, Europe and perhaps the rest of the world. It will be the nerve centre of a lot of activities. The educational component also plays an important role, for example, with the clinical technology degree programme. Very good things and people are already coming out of this and I have high expectations of them. Because science is one part, but training new talent in the combined disciplines, that is the multiplier. Each year, we now have almost a hundred new graduates. They will soon have a greater impact than the Medical Delta professors of today. They are the future."

What is your advice for successful collaboration?

"Stay connected with where you originate from. That is where your value and your strength lies. You have to build a bridge, but stay true to what you are good at. Also, in collaboration, there must be a genuine mutual interest and you must both benefit from it. If you go up to someone and say 'I need this piece of technology from you' or 'this technology needs to go into a patient', it doesn't work. It takes time to understand what is happening on the other side and what the problems are. You also have to find a common language. With me, for example, everything is straight. The components, my diagrams. In biology, everything is curved, for example, cells, tissues and organs. You have to find a way of dealing with it. It is in the shared fascination with the problem that we find each other."

Which other researcher surprised you?

"Multiple researchers, but Chris de Zeeuw of Erasmus MC keeps surprising me. It is an important reason for choosing his department for my second appointment as a professor. He is an inspiring leader. He has great scientific knowledge and knows how to create a group and offer opportunities. He sees the importance of other disciplines for his own and was perhaps generation zero of Medical Delta."

This article is part of a series in which we highlight the nine new Medical Delta professors. Click here for the other portraits that have been published so far. Wouter Serdijn's research contributes to scientific programs, including, including Medical NeuroDelta: Ambulant Neuromonitoring for Prevention and Treatment of Brain Disease and Medical Delta Cardiac Arrhythmia Lab.

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Three Medical Delta professors in micro electronics department

  • Wednesday, 3 November 2021

On November 2, nine professors were simultaneously inaugurated as 'Medical Delta professor' at Leiden University, LUMC, TU Delft, Erasmus University and/or Erasmus MC. Among which ME professor Wouter Serdijn and part time professors Natasja Groot and Andrew Webb. With an appointment at at least two of these five academic institutions, they combine technology and healthcare in their professorship.

The nine professors have each earned their spurs in research at the intersection of health and technology. Examples include the use of new techniques to determine the cause of cardiac arrhythmia, how cartilage can be repaired using technology, and how e-health can help with rehabilitation or prevention of illness. The official inauguration follows their earlier appointment as Medical Delta professors. During the inauguration, the professors presented their research and answered questions from young researchers.

See more: https://www.medicaldelta.nl/en

Online conference Neural Interfaces and Artificial Senses (NIAS)

  • Wednesday, 1 September 2021

Since 1958 when the first pacemaker was implanted in humans, bioelectronics devices have been increasingly used to interface with different types of tissue, monitor and interact with biological activity. During our continuous endeavors to better study sophisticated neuronal systems we have become more capable of diagnosing and treating various disorders. We are currently emerging in an era where bioelectronic devices are becoming smaller, less invasive and safer, which in turn is being paralleled with new therapies for a vast range of neurological and auto-immune diseases. This opens exciting possibilities for the future, from cutting-edge technology for brain-machine-interfaces with unprecedented functionality, artificial organs and augmented senses that can change the way we perceive the world, to a more human way of interactions with robots.

Topics to be covered by the conference: • Bioelectronic devices • Electroceuticals/Bioelectronic medicine • Neuronal interfaces and implantable electronics • Materials at the interface with biology • Neuronal mechanisms and clinical applications • Artificial visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile sensory systems.

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Asli Yelkenci wins CadenceLIVE Europe 2021 award

  • Friday, 27 August 2021

Asli Yelkenci is the winner of the CadenceLIVE Europe 2021 under the category of “Master Thesis Award for the Best Design using Cadence tools” with her master thesis done at Delft University of Technology under the supervision of Virgilio Valente, Section Bioelectronics.

Her thesis title is “A 16-Channel CMOS Reconfigurable Unit for Simultaneous In-Vitro Microelectrode Array (MEA) and Current-Clamp Measurements” which aims to gain insight into the correlation between electrical activities of a population of cells and single-cell activity. She will present her work during the online event CadenceLIVE Europe 2021 on 19th October.

You can register for the event and see the celebratory video via the link below.

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The rising stars of the TU Delft, featuring Dante Muratore

  • Tuesday, 8 June 2021

After his PhD in what he calls “hardcore analogue microelectronics”, rising star Dante Muratore knew he wanted to continue his career working on systems that are closer to an actual application. A postdoc position at Stanford University, in which he worked on the electronics for an artificial retina to treat medical conditions leading to the loss of vision, brought him just that. Then, wanting to come back to Europe and to continue doing bioelectronics at the highest level possible, an opening at TU Delft crossed his path. ‘It was the easiest choice I ever made,’ he says.

Read more about Dante in the link below!

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Ultrasound for microimplants – enabling personalized medicine with wireless charging

  • Thursday, 27 May 2021

Treatment of chronic autoimmune diseases is no longer limited by the expensive drugs and undesirable side effects. Neuromodulation has been shown to be effective in treating diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, chronic headaches, asthma or Parkinson's disease. To enable the technology for widespread clinical application, researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are developing a new generation of microimplants as part of the EU Moore4Medical project. These highly miniaturized devices have a special feature: the implants can be charged entirely wirelessly using ultrasound waves.

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Assistant professor Tiago Lopes da Costa (Bio electronics) receives the ‘early career HFSP research grant’

  • Thursday, 1 April 2021

Abstract

Cellular communication is mediated by voltage-gated, ligand-gated and mechanosensitive ion channels. Tools for modulating neuronal communication based on focused ultrasound (FUS) were developed to overcome fundamental limitations in optogenetics, combining non-invasive approaches and high spatial resolution without the need for genetic modification of neurons. Yet, little is known about the fundamental mechanisms of how focused ultrasound waves influence the finely tuned interplay of ion channels and lipid bilayers. How does the frequency and intensity of the ultrasound wave affects the lipid bilayer and different types of ion channels? What is the physical mechanism that governs the triggering of ion channel activity? These questions remain unanswered, with existing hypothesis limited by the spatio-temporal resolution of traditional optical, electrophysiology and ultrasound tools, which prohibit observations at the single ion channel level. To answer these questions we hypothesize that, if there would be a way to monitor effects of the FUS on the lipid bilayer and single ion channels with high temporal resolution, one should be able to monitor ultrasound-evoked oscillating current responses informing on ultrasound neuromodulation mechanisms. Hence, the aim of this proposal is to develop a concurrent experimental and computational approach, where state-of-the-art ultrasound and current read-out devices enabling high-bandwidth electrophysiology are matched with computational electrophysiology simulations. This will allow us for the first time to match the frequency of the focused ultrasound with the bandwidth of single ion channel recordings and the length of the computer-based simulations. We will focus our efforts in three aims, where Aim1 will establish the recording systems and simulations using model membranes alone and a mechanosensitive model channel. In Aim2 we will develop a recording platform integrating US-stimulation and high bandwidth recordings in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, extending our efforts on non-mechanosensitive channels. In Aim3, we will combine the gained knowledge from Aims 1 and 2 to focus on mechanosensitive channel that are hypothesized to be involved in neuromodulation.

"Tech for Health" featuring Natasja de Groot

  • Sunday, 28 March 2021

Please donate to our research on better understanding of cardiac arrhythmia

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Profcast with Prof. Wouter Serdijn

  • Thursday, 18 March 2021

Or visit this link

Webinar with dr. Vasso Giagka: "Lowering the Barrier for Customized Micro Systems in Medical Applications"

  • Tuesday, 9 March 2021

Webinar: "Lowering the Barrier for Customized Micro Systems in Medical Applications" Dear EUROPRACTICE member, We are delighted to invite you to a webinar organized by EUROPRACTICE together with flanders.health dedicated to lowering the barrier for customized micro systems in medical applications, which will take place online on March 24, 2021, from 14:00 to 16:00 CET. If you have been following the trends in medical innovations in recent years, you know that microelectronic solutions are revolutionizing the MedTech industry and improving the quality of delivered healthcare and thus patient life tremendously. Whether it is artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), or sensing, microelectronic systems play a key role in accelerating these trends in the medical world. For MedTech companies, it is important that microelectronic systems can be customized, but typically this comes at a high cost.

This is where EUROPRACTICE comes in. The consortium lowers the barrier for customized microsystems by providing affordable access to design tools, fabrication services, and training. If you are interested in learning more about how customized microsystems can make the difference for your medical application, then invest 2 hours of your time to learn about EUROPRACTICE and its affordable services. In this webinar, we will particularly zoom in on Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Photonic Integrated Circuits, and how those can be fabricated and integrated in microsystems for medical applications. The latter will be illustrated by several testimonials/case studies presented by both academia and industry.

Webinar Agenda

1. Introduction by flanders.health

2. “Overview of Micro Systems in Medical Applications and how EUROPRACTICE can lower the barrier to technology access” - Romano Hoofman (imec)

3. Case Studies

Steve Stoffels (Pulsify Medical) – “Pulsify’s ultrasound monitoring patch: future medical grade wearables enabled by custom components.”

Jan-Willem Hoste (Antelope Dx) – “Antelope Diagnostics: Bringing photonic chip technology to a consumer market”

Pieter Harpe (TU Eindhoven) – “Custom microelectronics for ambulatory pregnancy monitoring and ultrasound catheters”

Vasiliki Giagka (TU Delft) – “Microelectronic chips for bio-electronic medicine: Engineering long-lasting and spatially selective active neural implants”

Bob Puers (KU Leuven) – “Concept for a high resolution neural interface with polymer-CMOS hybrid interconnects”

4. Q&A

Register https://share.hsforms.com/1sMh30WWDQzi-2-_qMcq9OQ42q9f?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=114173729&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_J0UTBpWNtB6-mAe-UvA_dkxZRlerg6ZC5tgyAS8t3UFTXI7bZqdR5oHS-50jKN_SVQoHXjUVVGCmXsr2KSch9lKtT6g&utm_content=114173729&utm_source=hs_email

INESC MN 2021 Seminar Series - Dr. Tiago Costa, March 5, 16.00 PM

  • Thursday, 4 March 2021

Neurological disorders are the leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of death, worldwide. Still, a paradigm exists in the available therapies: while pharmaceutical drugs are non-invasive but have poor precision and low effectiveness in the long term, therapies based on implantable electrical stimulators have high precision but are also highly invasive, which reduces patient eligibility. For the first time, a minimally invasive and precise neuromodulation modality is emerging through low intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU). However, the hand-held form-factors of existing ultrasound technology, together with its spatial resolution still being 10x lower than implantable electrodes, are hampering advances in both fundamental neuroscience research and the translation to the clinic. In this talk, I will describe my research on stand-alone ultrasonic microchips, by exploring the co-design and integration of CMOS circuits and piezoelectric materials. With massive miniaturization, focused ultrasound can be delivered through more efficient methods (wearable, injectable) while supporting higher ultrasound frequencies towards higher spatial resolution. These advances will contribute to a new generation of ultrasound technology to bring LIFU neuromodulation to the forefront of neuroscience and neurology.

To register see link below:

https://sites.google.com/site/inescmn/home/news

Cardiac mapping of very young children reveals conduction disorders related to atrial fibrillation

  • Friday, 8 January 2021

Research of Medical Delta professor prof. dr. Natasja de Groot (Erasmus MC and TU Delft)

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Delft Bioengineering Institute awards Tiago Costa and Massimo Mastrangeli with 20KEUR grants

  • Wednesday, 16 December 2020

Dr. Tiago Costa (BE) and Dr. Massimo Mastrangeli (ECTM) have been awarded grants of 20KEUR by the Delft Bioengineering Institute (BEI) to pursue their research projects on ultrasound-based regeneration of neuronal circuits and medical implants to investigate cell mechanobiology, respectively.
Their multidisciplinary project proposals, conceived to bridge expertise among different departments within TU Delft, are among the 5 selected for the grants out of the 13 total submissions received by the BEI in response to their first call for proposals.
The projects will be run respectively in collaboration with Dr. Dimphna Meijer (TNW/BN) and Dr. Mohammad J. Mirzaali (3mE/BM).
Below are short summaries of the projects.

Regenerating neuronal circuits using ultrasound

People suffering from neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis, have impaired neuronal circuits. Generation of new neuronal circuits by using a patient’s own stem cells may prove helpful in treating the disease. One of the difficulties in inducing neurons from stem cells, is the low efficiency rate we are able to achieve so far. In this project, BEI PIs Tiago Costa of Microelectronics (EWI) and Dimphna Meijer of Bionanoscience (TNW) join forces to explore the use of ultrasound for effectively building active neuronal networks from stem cells.

Project title: SoundCircuit: Regeneration of neuronal circuits using ultrasound
BEI PIs: Tiago Costa (EWI/ME), Dimphna Meijer (TNW/BN)

Medical implants to investigate cell mechanobiology

In order to study the cell’s behavior and differentiation, we need to be able to measure the mechanical, electrical, and biochemical signals that are dynamically transmitted throughout the cells. This requires the creation of biomaterial models equipped with different sensor types. In this project, BEI PIs Mohammad J. Mirzaali of Biomechanical Engineering (3mE) and Massimo Mastrangeli of Microelectronics (EWI) will team up to design, fabricate and test the proof-of-concept for medical implants equipped with force sensors that can reach a sensitivity level of one micronewton, so the mechanobiology of cells can be effectively investigated.

Project title: Sixth Sense Biomaterials
BEI PIs: Mohammad J. Mirzaali (3mE/BM), Massimo Mastrangeli (EWI/ME)

Read the full story on the TU Delft page.

Success!

Microimplants: electricity instead of pills

  • Monday, 30 November 2020

Interview in MEDICA Magazine with Prof. Vasiliki Giagka, Group Leader "Technologies of Bioelectronics", Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM and Assistant Professor of Bioelectronics, Delft University of Technology

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New sensor chips; low-cost, smart and efficient

  • Wednesday, 28 October 2020

In a greenhouse, cucumbers are growing beautifully. A grower is cultivating them under the most favourable conditions, closely monitoring the precise amount of water they need and whether the temperature is optimal, to ensure that the cucumbers that end up on your plate are juicy, flavoursome and green. The grower’s job is by no means carefree, however. What if the crop is blighted by some disease? One of the strategies that researchers are working on to prevent this involves an “electronic nose”. All plants, cucumbers included, emit a scent. An electronic nose can immediately detect whether something is wrong. The same technique can be applied in a chicken coop or cowshed. As soon as a disease breaks out, the electronic nose will detect it and give a warning.

For complete article;

https://www.tudelft.nl/en/stories/articles/new-sensor-chips-low-cost-smart-and-efficient/

Treating your disorder with electronic medicines

  • Thursday, 15 October 2020

Increasing numbers of people now have a chip in their body which they can use to make payments or check in to public transport. “It sounds futuristic, but the technology is not that extraordinary”, explains Prof. Wouter Serdijn. “My dog has something similar.”

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SSCS WYE Webinar

  • Tuesday, 4 August 2020

Webinar: To Academia, or to Industry, That is the Question. Presented by: Kofi Makinwa and Shin-Lien Lu

Abstract:

You are about to finish graduate school or perhaps a young or seasoned professional, contemplating a career transition. Which is better - a career in academia or industry? What are the pros and cons of one versus the other? How can you start exploring and build up your career accordingly? In this webinar, we will interview Dr. Linus Lu, a professor-turned-industry veteran, and Prof. Kofi Makinwa, an industry veteran-turned-professor, who will share their insights and perspectives from their personal journeys in both academia and industry careers. They will also address what triggered their transitions, how they staged their transitions, and offer their crystal ball projections on present and future career prospects in the solid-state-circuits profession.

REGISTER TODAY!

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Moore4Medical kicks off

  • Thursday, 16 July 2020

The ECSEL Joint Undertaking Moore4Medical kicked off last June, 2020 with the overarching objective to accelerate innovation in electronic medical devices. Moore4Medical is masterminded by prof. Ronald Dekker (Philips Research & ECTM) and sees important involvement and vast opportunities for TU Delft’s Microelectronics department.

The project addresses emerging medical applications and technologies that offer significant new opportunities for the Electronic Systems & Components (ECS) industry, including: bioelectronic medicines, organ-on-chip, drug adherence monitoring, smart ultrasound, radiation free interventions and continuous monitoring. The new technologies will help fighting the increasing cost of healthcare by reducing the need for hospitalisation, helping to develop personalized therapies, and realising intelligent point-of-care diagnostic tools.

Moore4Medical will bring together 66 selected companies, universities and institutes from 12 countries who will develop open technology platforms for these emerging fields to help them bridge “the Valley of Death” in shorter time and at lower cost. Open technology platforms used by multiple users for multiple applications with the prospect of medium-to-high volume markets are an attractive proposition for the European ECS industry. The combination of typical MedTech and Pharma applications with an ECS style platform approach will enhance the competitiveness for the emerging medical domains addressed in Moore4Medical. With value and IP moving from the technology level towards applications and solutions, defragmentation and open technology platforms will be key in acquiring and maintaining a premier position for Europe in the forefront of affordable healthcare.

TU Delft’s Microelectronics department leads two of the six workpackages represented in Moore4Medical: the Implanatable Devices workpackage, led by Dr. Vasiliki “Vasso” Giagka (BE & Fraunhofer IZM), and the Organ-on-Chip workpackage, led by Dr. Massimo “Max” Mastrangeli (ECTM). Both workpackages will see the interaction and contribution of many world-class industrial and academic players to develop respectively bioelectronic medicines and smart multi-well plate platforms, and will provide a rich opportunity to capitalize on and further expand the standing expertise of the BE and ECTM groups of the department.

We wish Moore4Medical success!

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Andra Velea wins Audience Award of the Young Medical Delta Thesis Awards

  • Friday, 10 July 2020

We are proud to announce that the MSc thesis of Andrada Velea on the development of 'Flexible Passive and Active Graphene-based Spinal Cord Implants' won the audience award of the Young Medical Delta Thesis Awards 2020 with 418 out of the 1024 votes. The research theme is a successful synergy of the expertises of the ECTM and BE sections, and was supervised by Vasiliki Giagka and Sten Vollebregt. Andrada’s work has led to 2 IEEE conference publications, among which the prestigious 33rd IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (IEEE MEMS 2020), which took place earlier this year in Vancouver. We would like to congratulate her for this great achievement.

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Medical Delta Professors appointed

  • Monday, 22 June 2020

Medical Delta appointed 9 new MD Professors, with joint appointments at LUMC and TU Delft, or Erasmus MC and TU Delft. Three of these are connected to the MicroElectronics Department: Wouter Serdijn, Andrew Webb, and Natasja de Groot.

Prof. Dr. Natasja de Groot (Erasmus MC, TU Delft) researches the use of sensors and catheters to more accurately diagnose and treat cardiac arrhythmias. At TU Delft, she will have an affiliation with CAS and BE.

Prof. Dr. ir. Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft, Erasmus MC) researches the use of bioelectronics in medical research. At EMC, he will have an affiliation with Neuroscience.

Prof. Dr. Andrew Webb (LUMC, TU Delft) researches how imaging can be more widely available for medical purposes. He is a professor in MRI at LUMC, and already had a part-time appointment at CAS.

The new Medical Delta professors introduce themselves and their research in a short video. This can be viewed here:

 

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Professor Wouter Serdijn appointed as Medical Delta Professor

  • Monday, 18 May 2020

Since 2011 Medical Delta professorships have been established and approved by the executive board of Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Leiden University. At the moment 13 professors are active as Medical Delta professor.

A Medical Delta professorship is an honorary title for those who meet the requirements that they have double appointments at, at least, two of the three universities participating in Medical Delta and are active in research and teaching in a way that makes a Medical Delta appointment appropriate.

In the last year the board of Medical Delta together with the scientific council of the Medical Delta and governors of the academic knowledge institutes developed a process to identify the professors that fulfil these criteria. Based on this process a number of professors have been identified to be eligible for this honorary title of which professor Wouter Serdijn is one.

Kleine Stromstöße mit heilsamer Wirkung (Eng: Small surges of electricity with a healing effect)

  • Thursday, 30 April 2020

Winzige Chips statt Medikamente – leitet die „Bioelektronik“ eine neue Ära der Medizin ein? Ein Überblick über die neuen Ansätze (Eng: Tiny chips instead of medication - does "bioelectronics" usher in a new era of medicine? An overview of the new approaches). Article by Susanne Donner with, a.o. Vasiliki Giagka in Der Tagespiegel.

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How smart sensors can prevent epilepsy

  • Tuesday, 21 April 2020

In Delft and Rotterdam, Wouter Serdijn and Christos Strydis are collaborating on a network of sensors and stimulators for the body. By picking up signals and sending the brain a rapid wake-up call, they hope to be able to predict and prevent epileptic fits. ‘If we can close the loop, we’ll have the technology ready within three years.’ Article in Nodes, with Christos Strydis and Wouter Serdijn.

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Therapies without drugs -- Tech News

  • Tuesday, 25 February 2020

Fraunhofer researchers Tim Hosman and Vasiliki Giagka are investigating the potential of microimplants to stimulate nerve cells and treat chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, or Parkinson’s disease. Find out what makes this form of treatment so appealing and which challenges the researchers still have to master.

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Student Alberto brings wireless monitoring a step closer

  • Saturday, 22 February 2020

In September 2017 Alberto Gancedo started his master programme Microelectronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS). Alberto’s ambition was bigger than obtaining his degree. His ambition was to develop a small, portable and cheap monitoring device to detect unusual brain activity in premature babies directly after birth. Thanks to donations from EEMCS alumni, Alberto could start his master’s at TU Delft and work towards this ambition. Alberto graduated in the beginning of February 2020 and proudly updates Delft University Fund and EEMCS alumni about his achievements.

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Christos Strydis winner of the Delft Health Competition

  • Friday, 24 January 2020

During the Future Health at TU Delft Symposium of January 23, Christos Strydis (Computer Engineering, Bioelectronics and Neuroscience) won one of the three prizes of 10,000 Euro in the Delft Health Competition.

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"The Rising Stars of TU Delft" featuring Tiago da Costa

  • Friday, 15 November 2019

Delft Health Initiative introduces "The rising stars of the TU Delft". Here we present stories of talented researchers, assistant and associate professors in the field of healthcare. The goal is to get to know the rising stars, read about their research and ambitions, and look for collaborations. Click below for the story of rising star Tiago da Costa.

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Call for Papers: Bioelectronic medicine: engineering advances, physiological insights, and translational applications

  • Thursday, 5 September 2019

Special issue of Bioelectronic Medicine, edited by Vasiliki Giagka, Stavros Zanos, Timir Datta-Chaudhuri, Loren Rieth, and Theodoros Zanos

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Wouter Serdijn appointed theme leader of Delft Health Initiative 2.0's NeuroTech theme

  • Wednesday, 4 September 2019

The Delft Health Initiative has laid the foundation for connected health-oriented research at TU Delft and will continue to focus expertise, develop talent and to connect researchers to national and international initiatives. Wouter Serdijn will lead this for Neurotechnology.

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Integrated devices for neuronal ultrasound stimulation

  • Monday, 15 July 2019

Neuronal interfaces have been widely developed in last decades with the purpose of providing a path for communication with the nervous system. The most common neuronal interfaces are based on electrical recording and stimulation of neuronal activity, which typically require surgical implantation of electrodes to achieve the necessary spatial resolution. To overcome the many hurdles and risks of surgery, non-invasive techniques to interface with the nervous system are currently being developed, and one of the most promising techniques uses focused ultrasound as a neuromodulation therapeutic modality. Due to its non-invasiveness, to achieve the necessary high spatial resolution, comparable to implantable electrodes, ultrasound transducers and electronics must be integrated in the same device. Its success may lead the way to surgery-free neuro-prosthetics and electroceuticals.

Read more on Pages 29-31 of ETV's Maxwell 22.4

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Het medicijn van de toekomst slik je maar een keer en is bioelektronisch

  • Monday, 15 July 2019

Item op BNR Nieuwsradio van 15 juli 2019, met een bijdrage van Wouter Serdijn over het onderzoek op bioelektronische medicijnen zoals onderzocht worden aan de TU Delft

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Open Course Analog Integrated Circuit Design No. 1 in Microelectronics and No. 2 in Electrical Engineering

  • Thursday, 2 May 2019

Analog Integrated Circuit Design is an introductory course in analog circuit synthesis for microelectronic designers. Topics include: Review of analog design basics; linear and non-linear analog building blocks: harmonic oscillators, (static and dynamic) translinear circuits, wideband amplifiers, filters; physical layout for robust analog circuits; design of voltage sources ranging from simple voltage dividers to high-performance bandgaps, and current source implementations from a single resistor to high-quality references based on negative-feedback structures.

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Asli Yelkenci wins BioEl 2019 best poster presentation

  • Tuesday, 2 April 2019

Asli presented her approach for co-integration of planar patch-clamps and microelectrode arrays in the same device, thus enabling for high-throughput simultaneous intra- and extra-cellular measurements of cardiac cells. Asli received a prize of 300 Euros sponsored by Panaxium.

Ref: A. Yelkenci, R. Martins da Ponte, V. Valente. Co-integration of flip-tip patch clamp and microelectrode arrays for in-vitro recording of electrical activity of cardiac cells. Presented at the 2019 Winterschool on Bioelectronics, Kirchberg, Austria, 16-23 March 2019.

Vasiliki Giagka appointed associate editor for Bioelectronic Medicine

  • Saturday, 9 March 2019

Bioelectronic Medicine (BM) is an open access, peer reviewed and relatively young journal published by the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research (in New York, NJ, USA) on BMC’s platform (part of Springer Nature): https://bioelecmed.biomedcentral.com. The journal brings together material science, molecular medicine, bioengineering, neuroscience, computer science and other related disciplines focused on new insights into the role of the nervous system in disease and health, and the importance of discovering new molecular mechanisms and technologies to treat disease. The journal has an expanded community and multidisciplinary audience from healthcare, technology and scientific research. Specialists writing for BM come from fields such as neuroscience, biology, bioengineering, electronics, computing, data analytics, molecular medicine, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and personalized medicine and last named is extremely important in the upcoming domain of bioelectronic medicine, also known as electroceuticals, the electronic counterparts of pharmaceuticals.

At the core of electroceuticals is the electrical signal used by the nervous system to communicate information. Virtually every cell in the body is directly or indirectly controlled by these neural signals. Bioelectronic medicine technologies can record, stimulate and block neural signaling. Through its ability to manipulate neural signals it will change the way physicians treat diseases and conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, diabetes, paralysis, bleeding and even cancer.

All articles published by BM are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. This nicely aligns with Delft University of Technology’s Open Acces policy.

For the same journal, Wouter Serdijn (also Section Bioelectronics at Delft University of Technology) has agreed to be serving as contributing editor. In this role, he will advise the editors of new trends, which may soon become prevalent in the field; keep up-to-date with the journal’s publications and provide feedback to the editors; contribute topic ideas and manuscripts to thematic series that will be implemented by the journal in the future; recommend articles from the field for publication.

Wouter Serdijn nieuw lid Wetenschappelijke Raad Medical Delta

  • Friday, 22 February 2019

Als lid heeft Wouter Serdijn de taak om bij te dragen aan het creëren van het wetenschappelijk programma en daarmee aan de visie van Medical Delta. Hij helpt mede vorm te geven aan onderzoeksprogramma’s en zal als ambassadeur optreden. Serdijn: “Met diverse langlopende samenwerkingen met zowel het ErasmusMC en het LUMC waren EWI en mijn sectie Bioelectronics al ‘Medical Delta’ vanaf het eerste uur. Niet zo verwonderlijk, want het behouden en terugwinnen van 100% gezondheid gerelateerde kwaliteit van leven vraagt steeds vaker micro-elektronische ondersteuning. Deze ondersteuning is belangrijk, zowel voor het begrijpen van de menselijke fysiologie en het menselijk gedrag als voor het betrouwbaar stellen van een diagnose, voor het nauwkeurig en ongestoord monitoren en voor een succesvolle persoonlijke behandeling. Ik denk dat dit goed aansluit bij de missie van Medical Delta en ik draag namens EWI graag een steentje bij.”

Medical Delta is een netwerk van life sciences, gezondheids- en technologie-organisaties. Gevestigd in de Nederlandse Rijndeltaregio bundelen zij een brede kennis en ervaring en fungeren als katalysator voor innovatie en samenwerking op het gebied van gezondheid.

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First Microelectronics Synergy Grants

  • Friday, 22 February 2019

According to Professor Geert Leus who heads the ME Research Committee, the Synergy Grants are also intended to kick-start the research of young faculty, as it can be quite challenging for them to obtain funding at the beginning of their research careers. The grants cover half the costs of a PhD candidate, with the rest coming from existing research funding. ‘The submitted proposals were carefully evaluated by the ME Research Committee on the basis of their scientific quality, their clarity and feasibility, the synergy between the participating sections, and the relationship to the departmental themes. The ME Management Team (MT) then decided to award Synergy Grants to the top three proposals.’

Changes

The aim of the grants is to encourage newly emerging combinations of technologies and to facilitate cross-overs between them, thus strengthening and broadening the department's research portfolio. This goal fits seamlessly within the research strategy of ME, which has defined itself around the four themes of Health & Wellbeing, XG, Safety & Security and Autonomous Systems to better address societal challenges.

Winners

Last week, the winners were received by the ME MT. They received flowers from the head of the department (Kofi Makinwa) and had the opportunity to briefly present their proposals to the assembled MT. Below are short descriptions of the successful proposals.

Akira Endo & Sten Vollebregt: ‘The aim of our project TANDEM: Terahertz Astronomy with Novel DiElectric Materials is to develop advanced dielectric materials to realize superconducting microstrip lines with very low losses in the frequency ranges of 2-10 GHz and 100-1000 GHz. The PhD candidate will combine the dielectric deposition, characterization, material expertise and facilities of the ECTM group and the Else Kooi Laboratory, and the submillimetre wave device measurement capability of the THz Sensing Group and SRON. The aim is not only to realize low loss dielectrics, but also to understand the underlying physics that governs these losses. If successful, these microstrips will be immediately applied to enhance the sensitivity of the DESHIMA spectrometer on the ASTE telescope in Chile.’

Bori Hunyadi: ‘On one hand, the vast complexity of the human brain (10^11 neurons and 10^14 connections) enables us to process large amounts of information in the fraction of a second. At the same time, imperfections of the wiring in this vast network cause devastating neurological and psychiatric conditions such as epilepsy or schizophrenia. Therefore, understanding brain function is one of the greatest and most important scientific challenges of our times. Brain function manifests as various physical phenomena (electrical or e.g. metabolic) at different spatial and temporal scales. Therefore, the PhD candidate working on this grant will develop a novel multimodal and multiresolution brain imaging paradigm combining EEG and a novel imaging technique, fUS. The specific engineering challenge is to understand and describe the fUS signal characteristics, deal with the large amount of data it records using efficient computational tools; and finally, formulate the specification of a dedicated non-invasive, multimodal, wearable EEG-fUS device.’

Virgilio Valente & Massimo Mastrangeli: ‘The seed money of the Synergy Grant will partially support a joint PhD candidate to investigate the tight integration of an heart-on-chip device with dedicated electronic instrumentation in the same platform. Our aim is to bring sensing and readout electronics as close as possible to a cardiac tissue cultivated within a dedicated micro physiological device. The grant helps promoting the logical convergence between current departmental research activities at ECTM and BE and within the Netherlands Organ-on-Chip Initiative (NOCI) on the development of instrumented organ-on-chip devices.’

Microelectronics at work for sustainable healthcare

  • Saturday, 19 January 2019

The Medical Delta has launched twelve research programmes that work on technological solutions for sustainable care. EEMCS is represented in three programmes; Neurodelta (Wouter Serdijn), Medical Delta Cardiac Arrhythmia Lab (Wouter Serdijn and Alle-Jan van der Veen) and Ultrafast Ultrasound for the Heart and Brain (Michiel Pertijs), all part of the Microelectronics department.

In order to give the research programmes an extra impulse, a strategically important project is financed within each research programme.

In the Medical Delta 2.0 Neurodelta program Vasiliki Giagka and Wouter Serdijn (both Section  Bioelectronics) will work on miniature implants for simultaneously measuring and influencing brain activity by means of light and ultrasound.

Read more about Vasiliki Giagka's work: https://www.tudelft.nl/ewi/actueel/nodes/stories/elektrische-implantaten/

 

Within the Medical Delta 2.0 Cardiac Arrhythmia Lab, Virgilio Valente (Section Bioelectronics) and Richard Hendriks and Borbala Hunyadi (both Section CAS) will work on new bioelectronic signal acquisition and processing techniques to identify the electropathology of cardiac dysrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation, in an organ-on-chip set-up.

Read more about the work of Virgillio Valente: https://bme.weblog.tudelft.nl/2018/12/11/biocmos/ 

 

Within the Medical Delta 2.0 programme Ultrafast Ultrasound for the Heart and Brain, Michiel Pertijs (Section Electronic Instrumentation) will work on smart ultrasound probes that can take 3D images of the heart and brain at high speed, with the aim of enabling new and better diagnostics of cardiovascular and neurological disorders.

Read more about the work of Michiel Pertijs: https://www.tudelft.nl/ewi/actueel/nodes/stories/echos-uit-een-pleister/    

 

More information about Medical Delta: www.medicaldelta.nl/news/overzicht-programmas-medical-delta-20192023

Health Prototype Grant for Virgilio Valente

  • Saturday, 19 January 2019

The TU Delft Health Initiative objective is to promote research in the field of healthcare at Delft University of Technology and they granted 13 out of total 26 applications. ‘Organs-on-chip (OoC) systems represent the new frontier in biomedical engineering, aiming at re-producing and mimicking key aspects of living organs on microengineered biosystems, by modeling the structural and functional complexity of organs, tissue to tissue interactions and cellular metabolism. Coupled to microfluidics and multi-parameter sensing, OoCs promise a significant revolution in the development of future targeted drugs and therapies, by providing a vital alternative to conven-tional cell cultures and animal models. By leveraging the distinctive features of modern complemen-tary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, coupled with high-density microelectrode array (MEA) systems, we can develop complex yet com-pact microelectronic biodevices capable of interact-ing with biological networks at a single-cell scale with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. Im-pedance-based measurements (IM) have shown significant potential in monitoring cell and tissue contractions, morphology and cell-to-cell heteroge-neity. Impedance assays are currently routinely developed to assess drug toxicity in cardiac cell cul-tures. Commercial systems, including the xCELLI-gence RCTA by ACEA Biosystems, are based on the use of two electrodes for IM, which greatly limits the measurement resolution. To date, there is no com-mercial or research system capable of measuring impedance profiles from cardiac cell culture with high resolution.’

Read more about the work of Virgillio Valente: https://bme.weblog.tudelft.nl/2018/12/11/biocmos/

BioCMOS

  • Tuesday, 11 December 2018

The new frontier in smart and efficient diagnostics and analytics is represented by the fusion of semiconductor technologies and electrochemical sensors. BioCMOS devices, also known as Lab-on-CMOS or CMOS biosensors, consist of microelectronic interfaces with integrated high-density sensing elements. On top of these elements, biological and chemical assays can be directly performed, limiting considerably the need for additional external units. The Bioelectronics group is currently developing BioCMOS microsystems that target applications, including lab-on-chip and organ-on-chip platforms, point-of-care devices, implantable and injectable smart biosensors. By leveraging the distinctive features of modern complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, we can develop complex yet compact microelectronic bio-devices capable of interacting with biological networks at a cellular and molecular scale with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. BioCMOS technology promises to play a key role in defining future targeted therapies and personalized medicine, cost-effective drug discovery and development, and efficient disease management strategies. Read more on Page 18-21.

Bioelectronic Medicine

  • Tuesday, 11 December 2018

Imagine a tiny device that can treat patients by injecting small electrical pulses into the neuronal tissue. These tiny microelectronic devices are the main focus of a new exciting field called Bioelectronic Medicine, with the main goal of one day replacing conventional chemical drugs. When implanted, these devices can act on the body’s nervous system to treat a wide variety of disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, obesity, Crohn’s disease, migraine, epilepsy, etc.[1] .The technological challenges behind realizing such devices, however, are enormous and encompass almost every facet of microfabrication and bioengineering technologies. Read more on Page 6, 7 and 8.

Volgens de wetenschap kunnen doven straks horen en blinden zien

  • Friday, 26 October 2018

Er staan veel filmpjes online van emotionele mensen die, met behulp van moderne technologie, voor het eerst hun familie kunnen zien. Of van kinderen die voor het eerst de stem van hun ouders horen. Het zijn voorbeelden van de eerste stappen naar het genezen van blindheid. Prof. dr. Wouter Serdijn doet onderzoek naar het ontwikkelen van bio-elektronica met als doel het behandelen van deze menselijke kwalen. Artikel in het AD van 26 oktober 2018.

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Vacancy: Assistant/Associate Professor of Bioelectronics

  • Friday, 28 September 2018

Assistant/Associate Professor of Bioelectronics

Faculty: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Required Level: Completed PhD
Appointment: 32-38 hours per week
Contract duration: Tenure
Salary: 3545 - 5513 Euro per month (1 fte)

Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science


The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) is known worldwide for its high academic quality and the social relevance of its research programmes. The faculty’s excellent facilities accentuate its international position in teaching and research. Within this interdisciplinary and international setting the faculty employs more than 1100 employees, including about 400 graduate students and about 2100 students. Together they work on a broad range of technical innovations in the fields of sustainable energy, telecommunications, microelectronics, embedded systems, computer and software engineering, interactive multimedia and applied mathematics.


The Department of Microelectronics has a strong interdisciplinary research and education programme in the areas of 1. health and well-being, 2. autonomous systems, 3. next generation wireless and sensing technology and 4. safety and security.


With 11 IEEE Fellows among the staff, an excellent microfabrication infrastructure, electrical and physical characterisation facilities, and a strong international academic and industrial network, the department provides high-level expertise in each of these areas throughout the entire system chain.


The Section Bioelectronics is a relatively new section that has been created to address coherently the challenges we face in developing bioelectronic medicine and electroceuticals. The group conducts research, education and valorisation in the fields of circuits and systems for active wearable, implantable and injectable biomedical diagnostic, monitoring and therapeutic microsystems. The group is active in the domains of biosignal acquisition, conditioning and detection, electrical stimulation, transcutaneous wireless communication and power transfer, energy harvesting, bioinspired circuits and systems, CMOS diagnostic systems, flexible implants and microsystem integration.

Job description

The Bioelectronics group is offering a tenure-track position at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in the field of biomedical circuits and systems. You will further develop existing research topics, such as mixed-mode and digital circuits and systems for active wearable and implantable medical devices and create new topics, which may include bioelectronic medicine. You will be involved in teaching at the BSc and MSc levels in the TU Delft's Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering programmes and the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Technical Medicine programme. Collaborative initiatives are strongly encouraged. You are expected to write research proposals for national and international funding organisations. This is a tenure-track position for a period of five years with the possibility of a permanent faculty position at the end of the contract, subject to mutual agreement.


A Tenure Track, a process leading up to a permanent appointment with the prospect of becoming an Associate or Full Professor, offers young, talented academics a clear and attractive career path. During the Tenure Track, you will have the opportunity to develop into an internationally acknowledged and recognised academic. We offer a structured career and personal development programme designed to offer individual academics as much support as possible. For more information about the Tenure Track and the personal development programme, please visit www.tudelft.nl/tenuretrack.

Job requirements

You must have a PhD degree in the field of biomedical circuits and systems (BioCAS) and some years of experience as a post-doc or university professor. You have an excellent academic track record, reflected by peer-reviewed journal publications, conference contributions, and international research experience. An affinity for working on the interface with other disciplines (biomedical engineering, neuroscience, electrophysiology, biomedical signal processing, etc.) and with clinicians and medical researchers is preferred. You should have a demonstrated ability to initiate and direct research projects and to obtain external funding. Experience in teaching and mentoring of students is required. A teaching qualification is recommended. Demonstrated ability in written and spoken English is required.

Employment conditions

At the start of the tenure track you will be appointed as Assistant Professor for the duration of six years. Section leader, department leaders and you will agree upon expected performance and (soft) skills. You will receive formal feedback on performance and skills during annual assessment meetings and the mid-term evaluation. If the performance and skills are evaluated positively at the end of the tenure track, you will be appointed in a permanent Assistant Professor position.


TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, a discount for health insurance and sport memberships, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. An International Children’s Centre offers childcare and an international primary school. Dual Career Services offers support to accompanying partners. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.


TU Delft sets specific standards for the English competency of the teaching staff. TU Delft offers training to improve English competency.


Inspiring, excellent education is our central aim. If you have less than five years of experience and do not yet have your teaching certificate, we allow you up to three years to obtain this.

Information and application

For information about this vacancy, you can contact Prof. Wouter Serdijn, email: W.A.Serdijn@tudelft.nl.


For information about the selection procedure, please contact Mrs. L.M. Ophey, HR-Advisor, email: hr-eemcs@tudelft.nl


To apply, please submit by email a detailed CV that includes a list of publications, contact information of at least three scientists whom we can contact for letters of recommendation, and a research and teaching statement along with a letter of application by November 30, 2018 to: hr-eemcs@tudelft.nl.


When applying please mention vacancy number EWI2018-28.



The Medicine of the Future you take only once, and it is Bioelectronic

  • Wednesday, 29 August 2018

Guess what rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, blindness, deafness and paralysis have in common; they all can be successfully treated with bioelectronic medicine. In this 30 minute presentation at the Delft University Health College prof. Wouter Serdijn explains why and how. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odj1sIVaXhs

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Van Droom naar Daad

  • Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Interview van Studium Generale met Wouter Serdijn over de menselijke cyborg.

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Hoe verbeteren chips het menselijk lichaam?

  • Friday, 29 June 2018

Ruim 200 Nederlanders lopen al rond met een chip in hun lichaam, en het aantal groeit. Dat kan voor allerlei doeleinden zijn, van gemak tot verbetering van de kwaliteit van leven. Interview met Tom Oudenaarden en Wouter Serdijn op NPO Radio 1, woensdag 27 juni 2018.

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Analog Integrated Circuits No. 1 OCW course in Microelectronics, No. 2 in Electrical Engineering

  • Thursday, 28 June 2018

And again our Open CourseWare course Analog Integrated Circuit Design (ET4252) has the most page views of 2017. 14,790 page views!

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Objectief en gericht behandelen van patiënten met elektroceutica

  • Thursday, 17 May 2018

Medici grijpen vaak naar farmaceutische middelen om een kwaal bij een patiënt te verhelpen. De elektronische tegenhanger werkt in sommige gevallen echter beter. Langzaam wint deze techniek terrein zoals bij behandelingen voor het syndroom van Tourette, epilepsie en oorsuizen. Elektroceutica, een medische toepassing van bio-elektronica. Klein, flexibel en intelligent. Artikel in EngineersOnline.nl, over een presentatie van prof. dr. ir. Wouter Serdijn, hoogleraar bio-elektronica aan de Technische Unversiteit Delft.

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Slimme sensor die energie uit de lucht plukt, heeft eindeloos veel toepassingsmogelijkheden

  • Thursday, 19 April 2018

Begin oktober gingen ze in het kader van een pilot het asfalt in: slimme sensoren die de temperatuur in het wegdek meten, zodat onder andere veel gerichter en efficiënter tegen gladheid kan worden gestrooid. De innovatie werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door de sectie Bioelectronics binnen de faculteit Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica van de TU Delft die zich volgens hoogleraar Wouter Serdijn vooral bezig houdt met…de elektronische behandeling van aandoeningen in het menselijk lichaam.

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Maakt bio-elektronica medicijnen overbodig?

  • Sunday, 15 April 2018

Artikel van ir. Jim Heirbaut in De Ingenieur, d. 9 april 2018, over dat sommige reumapatiënten minder last van ontstekingen in hun gewrichten hebben als er onschuldige stroompulsjes worden losgelaten op de zenuwbundel in hun hals. Met daarin een bijdrage van Wouter Serdijn, hoogleraar bioelektronica aan de TU Delft.

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How Master student Alberto contributes to impact

  • Monday, 9 April 2018

Master student Alberto Gancedo from Spain got the opportunity, via Delft University Fund, to start his Master’s programme Microelectronics at TU Delft in September 2017. Besides studying, he is also working on his own project ‘Amplitude-integrated EEG measurement system (aEEG)’. Alberto’s goal: to develop a small, portable and cheap monitoring device to detect babies unusual brain activity directly after birth.

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Slimme contactlenzen en andere medische gadgets in je lijf

  • Saturday, 27 January 2018

Onderzoekers van de technische universiteit van Ulsan in Zuid-Korea zeggen een lens te hebben ontwikkeld die bloedsuikerwaarden uitmeet. Over deze lens en andere bio-elektronische medicijnen praten we met Wouter Serdijn. Hij is hoogleraar bio-elektronica aan de TU Delft. Item op NPO Radio 1, Nieuwsweekend, zaterdag 27 januari 2018.

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Grant for the development of smart cathethers & implants

  • Wednesday, 13 December 2017

Ronald Dekker, Vasiliki Giagka, Paul de Wit, Wouter Serdijn and Lina Sarro received a grant concerning the development of smart catheters and implants. The project is financed by ECSEL Innovation actions, Call 2017.

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Electrical Implants -- small devices with huge potential

  • Wednesday, 25 October 2017

Since the introduction of the pacemaker in 1958, much has changed in the world of electrical stimulation. Whereas the first electrical implants targeted muscles, the implants of today are flexible and focus mainly on the nerves in our body. The concept, however, remains unchanged: electrical implants give control back to the body. Vasiliki Giagka, Assistant Professor of Bioelectronics at TU Delft, talks about the past, present and future of her field of research.

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TU Delft "Female Fellowship" Tenure Track Academic Positions

  • Monday, 16 October 2017

All academic levels; apply before Jan 8, 2018.

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Denk de koffiezet aan

  • Thursday, 10 August 2017

Elon Musk droomt hardop van telepathische communicatie en van een veel grotere geheugeninhoud. Het zijn ideeën die wetenschappers en hippies in de sixties al koesterden, maar die vandaag nog gul op scepticisme stoten. Artikel van Tomas Van Dijk, in de Belgische krant De Standaard, d. 4 augustus 2017. Met bijdragen van Dirk de Ridder (University of Otago, Nieuw-Zeeland) en Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft / Bioelectronics).

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Hebben wij het eeuwige leven?

  • Saturday, 29 July 2017

Artikel in De Telegraaf, d. 29 juli 2017, van Wouter van Bergen, over transhumanisme en de rol van technologie. Met daarin een interview met Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft/Bioelectronics).

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Samprajani Rout's ISCAS 2017 paper among top papers of the conference

  • Wednesday, 28 June 2017

ISCAS 2017 paper No. 1849, entitled “Structured Electronic Design of High-Pass ΣΔ Converters and Their Application to Cardiac Signal Acquisition” has been selected as one of the top contributions to the conference and an extended version of the paper has been invited for the TBioCAS Special Issue on ISCAS 2017. Authors of the paper are Samprajani Rout and Wouter Serdijn (Section Bioelectronics)

Abstract of the paper:

Achieving an accurate sub-Hz high-pass (HP) cutoff frequency and simultaneously a high accuracy of the transfer function is a challenge in the implementation of analog-to-digital converters for biomedical ExG signals. A structured electronic design approach based on state-space forms is proposed to develop HP modulators targeting high accuracy of the HP cutoff frequency and good linearity. Intermediate transfer functions are mathematically evaluated to compare the proposed HP Sigma-Delta topologies with respect to dynamic range. Finally, to illustrate the design method, an orthonormal HP Sigma-Delta modulator is designed to be implemented in 0.18 um technology which achieves a linearity of 12 bits.

NWO Take-Off Grant (Phase 1) for Ide Swager and Menno Gravemaker (Momo Medical) and Wouter Serdijn (Section Bioelectronics)

  • Monday, 26 June 2017

Pressure ulcer wounds are a global problem in healthcare institutions, still. These wounds cause a lot of pain and discomfort for the patient, a high workload for the caregivers and cost a lot of money, in the EU alone already more than 15 billion Euros each year. TU Delft spin-off Momo Medical has developed a smart sensor bed sensor that solves this problem.

In this project, the following steps are taken to test the smart bed sensor in practice, in the Living Lab of the Reinier de Graaf Hospital. In addition, further commercial development is done by approaching more potential customers and understanding the cost structure of the product better when scaling up.

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Vasiliki Giagka elected member of the IEEE Biomedical and Life Science Circuits and SystemsTechnical Committee

  • Friday, 23 June 2017

At its annual meeting during the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Vasiliki Giagka (Section Bioelectronics) was elected member of the IEEE Biomedical and Lifescience Circuits and Systems Technical Committee.

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ABN Amro gaat betalen met je ring mogelijk maken

  • Thursday, 22 June 2017

ABN Amro claimt de eerste bank ter wereld te zijn die het mogelijk maakt om met een ring te betalen in plaats van met een pinpas. De bank experimenteert daar momenteel mee met een selecte groep van klanten. Hoeveel mensen met de ring willen betalen, is nog maar de vraag. Volgens hoogleraar bio-elektronica Wouter Serdijn hangt dat ook af van wat de ring nog meer voor functies krijgt. Item van de NOS, ook verschenen bij Finanzen en PowNed, d. 22 juni 2017.

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NWO Demonstrator Grant awarded to Wouter Serdijn (Bioelectronics) and Cees-Jeroen Bes (in-Holland)

  • Wednesday, 21 June 2017

We recently developed a radically new technique, coined "additive companding", which solves important technological limitations of current neural recording systems. The technology has been patented, tested in the lab as proof of concept and is now ready to be developed further into a prototype. The foreseen prototype will allow for continuous and complete monitoring of neural activity, offers better performance and consumes drastically less volume (<400 µm x 400 µm x 400 µm) and energy (<<1 mW) than neural monitoring systems that currently exist or are under development. Clinically, the continuous and complete neural monitoring will offer new insights into the exact workings of nerve and brain tissue and it becomes possible to take the first step into the development of active medical implants that adjust themselves to the therapeutical needs of the patient without subjective measures. This, ultimately, enhances the health-related quality of life of patients with nerve and/or brain disorders and allows for a better treatment of a larger variety of nerve and brain disorders.

In de Zweedse trein kun je inchecken met een onderhuidse chip

  • Saturday, 17 June 2017

Alleen uw hand even omhooghouden, waarna de treinconducteur die met zijn smartphone aanraakt en 'bliep': u bent ingecheckt. In Nederland is dit nog toekomstmuziek, maar in Zweden beleven treinreizigers momenteel de wereldwijde primeur in het openbaar vervoer: inchecken met een onder de huid aangebrachte microchip. Artikel in De Volkskrant en in De Morgen, d. 17 juni 2017, met een bijdrage van Wouter Serdijn

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This is how we will become bionic super humans

  • Thursday, 15 June 2017

Tech companies want to fix spinal cord injuries and make enhanced super humans that communicate through telepathy, or so Prof. Wouter Serdijn heard at a meeting this spring in Washington. There are some snags though.

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Alberto Gancedo-Reguilon awarded grant from the Delft University Fund and Electrical Engineering Alumni

  • Thursday, 2 March 2017

A year ago our faculty took part in a pilot mailing of the University Fund to acquire funding by alumni. The result was positive with a result of €5000 to fund a student project at EEMCS.

The selected project for this funding is of a Spanish Bachelor student called Alberto Gancedo, who did an internship at our Micro-Electronics department (Section Bioelectronics) and at HealthTech BV. He is working on an aEEG Measurement System. His goal is to create a portable and affordable tool to track brain development of neonatal babies. These tools are already available, in developed countries. However, these are big and expensive devices. Alberto's tool can be used in any hospital, instead of just a few, and also in developing countries because of low production costs and its small size. The prototype is ready and Alberto will return to Delft in September to start his Masters' degree and to continue with this project.

About the University Fund

The University Fund would like to give young talent the chance to shine. Therefore they hand out funding for e.g. internships abroad, study trips and participation at international conferences. Excellent achievements are rewarded too with funding and recognition.

Acting on the potential of action potentials: will bioelectronic medicines be the next biologics?

  • Sunday, 11 December 2016

Article by Emma Dorey in The Pharmaceutical Journal, 9 DEC 2016. In there, an interview with Wouter Serdijn

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Universiteit van Nederland: Hoe kun je een dove laten horen en een blinde laten zien?

  • Saturday, 12 November 2016

Hoe kun je een dove laten horen en een blinde laten zien?

Door prof. dr. ir. Wouter Serdijn

Doven weer laten horen en blinden weer laten zien: het lijkt misschien een godswonder, maar in principe heb je genoeg aan een superslimme chip. Hoe dat precies werkt weet elektronicus Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft) als geen ander. Laat je rondleiden in een wereld die zich op de vierkante millimeter afspeelt en ervaar zelf hoe het klinkt om met een chip te horen.

prof. dr. ir. Wouter Serdijn

Je lijf aansturen met behulp van bio-elektronica, dat is de tak van sport van prof. dr. Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft). Met behulp van implanteerbare chips in je lijf kun je je brein een handje helpen om losse elektronische eindjes weer goed aan elkaar te knopen. Het gevolg? Patiënten beter laten zien, horen of minder laten trillen (bij bijvoorbeeld Parkinsonpatienten).

De Universiteit van Nederland

Uitgezonden op 14 november 2016, om 20:30 uur. De Universiteit van Nederland is te bekijken via YouTube, NU.nl, Volkskrant.nl, Ziggo TV en sinds kort aan boord van alle KLM-vliegtuigen. De stichting wordt gesteund door 13 Nederlandse universiteiten, Ziggo, Deloitte, DELA en Shell.

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Vacancy: Team manager for Electrical Engineering Education (EEE)

  • Thursday, 6 October 2016

The Faculty of EEMCS is creating a special team to fully focus on teaching using our unique and innovative ‘Delft method’. This method integrates practical and theoretical electrical engineering education and trains students to be hands-on, theoretically versed electrical engineers ready for a future career in science or industry.

We are looking for a team manager specialising in Electrical Engineering Education (EEE) who will be both a group leader and a teacher in his/her capacity as the role model of EE Education.

More information

Vacancy: Assistant/Associate Professor of Bioelectronics

  • Friday, 30 September 2016

Department/faculty: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Level: PhD degree Working hours: 38 hours per week Contract: Tenure track with possibilities for advancement Salary: €3400 to €6299 per month gross

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) is known worldwide for its high academic quality and the social relevance of its research programmes. The faculty's excellent facilities accentuate its international position in teaching and research. Within this interdisciplinary and international setting the faculty employs more than 1100 employees, including about 400 graduate students and about 2100 students. Together they work on a broad range of technical innovations in the fields of sustainable energy, telecommunications, microelectronics, embedded systems, computer and software engineering, interactive multimedia and applied mathematics. EEMCS: Your Connection to the Future.

The Department of Microelectronics has a strong interdisciplinary research and education programme in the areas of 1. health and well-being 2. next generation wireless and sensing technology and 3. safety and security. With 11 IEEE Fellows among the staff, an excellent microfabrication infrastructure, electrical and physical characterisation facilities, and a strong international academic and industrial network, the department provides high-level expertise in each of these areas throughout the entire system chain.

The Bioelectronics section is a relatively new section that has been created to address coherently the challenges we face in developing wearable, injectable and implantable medical devices. This group conducts research, education and valorisation in the fields of ultra low-power analog and mixed-signal circuits and systems for active wearable, implantable and injectable biomedical microsystems.

Job description

The Bioelectronics group is offering a tenure-track position at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in the field of biomedical circuits and systems. You will further develop existing research topics, such as analog and mixed-mode circuits and systems for wearable and implantable medical devices and create new topics, which may include electroceuticals. You will be involved in teaching at the BSc and MSc levels in the TU Delft's Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering programmes. Collaborative initiatives are strongly encouraged. You are expected to write research proposals for national and international funding organisations. This is a tenure-track position for a period of five years with the possibility of a permanent faculty position at the end of the contract, subject to mutual agreement.

A Tenure Track, a process leading up to a permanent appointment with the prospect of becoming an Associate or Full Professor, offers young, talented academics a clear and attractive career path. During the Tenure Track, you will have the opportunity to develop into an internationally acknowledged and recognised academic. We offer a structured career and personal development programme designed to offer individual academics as much support as possible. For more information about the Tenure Track and the personal development programme, please visit www.tudelft.nl/tenuretrack.

Requirements

You must have a PhD degree in the field of biomedical circuits and systems (BioCAS) and some years of experience as a post-doc or university professor. You have an excellent academic track record, reflected by peer-reviewed journal publications, conference contributions, and international research experience. An affinity for working on the interface with other disciplines (biomedical engineering, neuroscience, electrophysiology, etc.) and with clinicians and medical researchers is preferred. You should have a demonstrated ability to initiate and direct research projects and to obtain external funding. Experience in teaching and mentoring of students is required. A teaching qualification is recommended. Demonstrated ability in written and spoken English is required.

Conditions of employment

A tenure-track position is offered for six years. Based on performance indicators agreed upon at the start of the appointment, a decision will be made by the fifth year whether to offer you a permanent faculty position. The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, a discount for health insurance and sport memberships, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. An International Children's Centre offers childcare and an international primary school. Dual Career Services offers support to accompanying partners. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities. The TU Delft sets specific standards for the English competency of the teaching staff. The TU Delft offers training to improve English competency. Inspiring, excellent education is our central aim. If you have less than five years of experience and do not yet have your teaching certificate, we allow you up to three years to obtain this.

Information and application

For more information about this position, please contact Prof. Wouter Serdijn, e-mail: W.A.Serdijn@tudelft.nl. To apply, please provide a detailed CV, publication list, and a written statement on your research and teaching interests and vision along with a letter of application and the names and contact details of at least three references. Please e-mail your application by 1 December 2016 to L. M. Ophey, Hr-eemcs@tudelft.nl. When applying for this position, please refer to vacancy number EWI2016-38.

Enquiries from agencies are not appreciated.

Boek: Vonken in de meterkast (Eng: Sparks in the meter box)

  • Thursday, 29 September 2016

De schokkende strijd tegen depressie, Parkinson en andere hersenziekten

Ons brein is een meterkast, een netwerk van kabels dat het lichaam van stroom voorziet. Soms ontstaat er kortsluiting - kabels slijten, stoppen slaan door - met hersenziekten als gevolg. Op dat moment kan elektriciteit uitkomst bieden. Depressie, Parkinson en chronische pijn; met een stroomstoot kunnen steeds meer mensen van hun klachten worden afgeholpen.

In Vonken in de meterkast laat Bart Lutters ons kennismaken met de fascinerende wereld van de neurostimulatie; van de allereerste vonk tot de nieuwste wetenschappelijke ontwikkelingen. Wie is er ooit op het idee gekomen om een patiënt onder stroom te zetten? Welke ziektes kunnen er met stroom behandeld worden? En wat doet zo'n stroomstoot eigenlijk met onze hersenen? Vonken in de meterkast gaat over elektrische vissen en op-afstand bestuurbare stieren, robotarmen en gereanimeerde ledematen, maar vooral over hoe stroom ons al duizenden jaren beter maakt.

bart_luttersBart Lutters is zijn artsenopleiding aan het afronden (Selective Utrecht Medical Master) en wordt gefascineerd door alles wat met de hersenen te maken heeft. Hij heeft diverse prijzen gewonnen voor zijn onderzoek naar epilepsie en schrijft regelmatig over de geschiedenis van de geneeskunde in onder andere Brain, het toonaangevende wetenschappelijke tijdschrift op het gebied van de neurowetenschappen.

Vonken in de meterkast is vanaf 14 oktober verkrijgbaar in de betere boekhandel, ook online te bestellen via Bol.com.

Wouter Serdijn (hoogleraar bioelektronica aan de TU Delft) heeft middels interviews aan de inhoud van dit boek bijgedragen.

Wouter Serdijn on Dutch radio station Radio 1

  • Wednesday, 3 August 2016

In the late evening show "Met het Oog op Morgen" of August 2, Wouter Serdijn comments on the future developments of Bioelectronic Medicine

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New Book: Analog IC Design Techniques for Nanopower Biomedical Signal Processing

  • Sunday, 5 June 2016

Description:

As the requirements for low power consumption and very small physical dimensions in portable, wearable and implantable medical devices are calling for integrated circuit design techniques using MOSFETs operating in the subthreshold regime, this book first revisits some well-known circuit techniques that use CMOS devices biased in subthreshold in order to establish nanopower integrated circuit designs. Based on the these findings, this book shows the development of a class-AB current-mode sample-and-hold circuit with an order of magnitude improvement in its figure of merit compared to other state-of-the-art designs. Also, the concepts and design procedures of 1) single-branch filters 2) follower-integrator-based lowpass filters and 3) modular transconductance reduction techniques for very low frequency filters are presented. Finally, to serve the requirement of a very large signal swing in an energy-based action potential detector, a nanopower class-AB current-mode analog multiplier is designed to handle input current amplitudes of more than 10 times the bias current of the multiplier circuit. The invented filter circuits have been fabricated in a standard 0.18 µ CMOS process in order to verify our circuit concepts and design procedures. Their experimental results are reported.

 

Keywords:

Analog integrated circuit, Biomedical electronics, Bionic ear, Bio-potential, CMOS, Current-mode, Cochlear implant, ECG, Filter, Gm-C, Multiplier, Neural recording, Sample-and-hold, Signal processing, Subthreshold, Switched-current, Transconductance reduction, Transconductor, Weak inversion

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FCA & CNHi Award for Alessandro Urso

  • Thursday, 2 June 2016

Alessandro Urso, PhD student Bioelectronics, received an award from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and CNH Industrial for his MSc thesis that has been awarded Summa Cum Laude. The award ceremony was held on the 31st of May in the headquarters of Fiat inTurin, Italy.

Alessandro, formerly MSc student of the University of Ferrara, Italy, did his MSc thesis project on the design of world's most energy efficient multi-channel neurostimulator IC and was supervised by Gianluca Setti (U. Ferrara) and Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft).

Currently, Alessandro is working towards his PhD degree in the Bioelectronics Section of TU Delft.

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OCW Course Analog Integrated Circuit Design largest number of page views in 2015

  • Saturday, 28 May 2016

Analog Integrated Circuit Design (ET4252) is an introductory course in analog circuit synthesis for microelectronic designers.

Topics include: Review of analog design basics; linear and non-linear analog building blocks: harmonic oscillators, (static and dynamic) translinear circuits, wideband amplifiers, filters; physical layout for robust analog circuits; design of voltage sources ranging from simple voltage dividers to high-performance bandgaps, and current source implementations from a single resistor to high-quality references based on negative-feedback structures.

The course coordinator and teacher of the course is Wouter A. Serdijn.

The course can also be downloaded from iTunes University via: https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/analog-integrated-circuit/id491267057?mt=10

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How can you get a deaf person to hear and a blind person to see again?

  • Friday, 20 May 2016

Prof. Wouter Serdijn, head of the bioelectronics Department will give the lecture: 'Hoe kun je een dove weer laten horen en een blinde weer laten zien?' (How can you get a deaf person to hear and a blind person to see again?) for the Universiteit van Nederland. This lecture, lasting around 15 minutes, is part of a lecture series on the senses, in which a total of five leading scientists are taking part. The recordings will take place on Tuesday 31 May. Students and staff at TU Delft receive a 25% discount on the ticket price. The lectures will be in Dutch.

For information about tickets please visit the website from the Universiteit van Nederland

Vasso Giagka in Quadraad

  • Saturday, 14 May 2016

This section features stories by two new members of EEMCS staff. This time they are Vasiliki Giagka and Johan Bosman.

Vasiliki GiagkaVasiliki Giagka
Is assistant professor in the Microelectronics department / Bioelectronics group.

Vasiliki Giagka (1984) was born in Athens. After studying Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, she completed her PhD at University College London in 2014. She has been living in Rotterdam since September. It will take her a while to get used to the Netherlands, far away from her friends in London. But she is happy with her bike, which gives her the freedom to go anywhere. Vasiliki Giagka joined the Microelectronics department in September 2015 as one of the three new tenure trackers. This quarter, she is teaching the courses Bioelectricity and Biomedical Engineering. Together with Prof Wouter Serdijn and Dr Reza Lotfi, she is developing a new course on Active Implantable Biomedical Microsystems.
Her research at TU Delft is still in its early stages. She is working on a European project proposal with a large number of partners. It’s an exciting process. In London, she was part of the European ?Neuwalk? project, aimed at repairing the body’s motor functions after serious cases of paraplegia from spinal cord injury. Giagka: ?As part of ?Neuwalk?, I focused on developing low-power flexible implants to repair the motor system.? In her free time, Giagka likes practising yoga and learning new languages. Giagka: ?Language learning expands the mind. Language also reveals a lot about a country’s culture. For example, in Greece, they do not have a good word for the term ?deadline?.? In addition to Greek and English, she has also studied some German, French, Spanish and, now Dutch. Giagka: ?I am currently midway through level A2.?

V.Giagka@tudelft.nl

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Wouter Serdijn receives the 2016 IEEE Circuits and Systems Meritorious Service Award

  • Sunday, 8 May 2016

IEEE CAS award for Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn (Section Bioelectronics) received from the IEEE Circuits and System Society (CAS) the Meritorious Service Award. This award honors the individual with exceptional long-term service and dedication to the interest of the CAS Society. Wouter Serdijn was awarded for his extraordinary leadership in improving technical quality and organization of IEEE CASS Flagship Conferences, such as the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems and the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference, and Transactions, in particular the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems.

The award ceremony will be next week in Montreal during the annual ISCAS conference.

New book: Design of Efficient and Safe Neural Stimulators - A Multidisciplinary Approach

  • Sunday, 1 May 2016

About this book:

This book discusses the design of neural stimulator systems which are used for the treatment of a wide variety of brain disorders such as Parkinson?s, depression and tinnitus. Whereas many existing books treating neural stimulation focus on one particular design aspect, such as the electrical design of the stimulator, this book uses a multidisciplinary approach: by combining the fields of neuroscience, electrophysiology and electrical engineering a thorough understanding of the complete neural stimulation chain is created (from the stimulation IC down to the neural cell). This multidisciplinary approach enables readers to gain new insights into stimulator design, while context is provided by presenting innovative design examples.

About the authors:

Marijn N. van Dongen was born in Pijnacker, The Netherlands, in 1984. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2010 and 2015, respectively. His research interests include the design of neural stimulator output circuits as well as the modeling of the electrophysiological and electrochemical processes during electrical stimulation. Currently he is working for NXP Semiconductors, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Dr. van Dongen served as the Financial Chair of the IEEE BioCAS2013 Conference.

Wouter A. Serdijn (M'98, SM'08, F'11) was born in Zoetermeer ('Sweet Lake City'), the Netherlands, in 1966. He received the M.Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 1989 and 1994, respectively. Currently, he is full professor of bioelectronics at Delft University of Technology, where he heads the Section Bioelectronics. His research interests include low-voltage, ultra-low-power and ultra wideband integrated circuits and systems for biosignal conditioning and detection, neuroprosthetics, transcutaneous wireless communication, power management and energy harvesting as applied in, e.g., hearing instruments, cardiac pacemakers, cochlear implants, neurostimulators, portable, wearable, implantable and injectable medical devices and electroceuticals.
He is co-editor and co-author of 9 books, 8 book chapters and more than 300 scientific publications and presentations. He teaches Circuit Theory, Analog Signal Processing, Micropower Analog IC Design and Bioelectronics. He received the Electrical Engineering Best Teacher Award in 2001, 2004 and 2015. Wouter A. Serdijn is an IEEE Fellow, an IEEE Distuingished Lecturer and a Mentor of the IEEE.

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New project "Earlier recognition of cardiovascular diseases" approved

  • Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a progressive disease and associated with severe complications such as stroke. Early treatment of AF is of paramount importance as it inhibits disease progression from the treatable (recurrent intermittent) to the untreatable (permanent) stage of AF. However, early treatment is seriously hampered by lack of accurate diagnostic instruments to recognize patients who will develop new onset AF or progress to a severer form of the disease.

The goal of this project is to develop age and gender based, bio-electrical diagnostic tests, the invasive and non-invasive AF Fingerprint, which consists of electrical atrial signal profiles and levels of atrial specific tissue/blood biomarkers. In daily clinical practice, this novel diagnostic instrument can be used for early recognition or progression of AF by determination of stage of the electropathology. As such, AF Fingerprinting enables optimal AF treatment, thereby improving patient?s outcome.

The project is a collaboration between Erasmus University (Dept. Cardiology), VU Medical Center (Dept. Physiology), and TU Delft (Sections CAS and Bioelectronics), and will fund 4 PhD students.

2016 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS 2016), Oct. 17-19 | Shanghai, China

  • Tuesday, 12 April 2016

IEEE BioCAS is a premier international forum for researchers and engineers to present their state-of-the-art multidisciplinary research and development activities at the frontiers of medicine, life sciences, and engineering. The conference will enable members of circuits and systems communities to broaden their knowledge in emerging areas of research at the interface of the life sciences and engineering.

BioCAS 2016 comprises invited talks on cutting-edge development, insightful tutorials in engineering and medicine, demonstrations, and technical sessions. The three-day program of BioCAS 2016 is multidisciplinary in topics including but not limited to:

  • Bio-inspired and Neuromorphic Circuits and Systems
  • Bio-medical Sensors and Interfacing Circuits
  • Biomedical Imaging Technologies & Image Processing
  • Electronics for Brain Science
  • Genomics and Systems Biology
  • Implantable and Wearable Devices and Systems
  • Internet of Things (IoT) for Healthcare
  • Innovative Circuits for Medical Applications
  • Lab-on-Chip/BioMEMS/Point-of care Devices
  • Medical Information Systems and Bioinformatics
  • Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
  • Signal Processing Systems for Bio-medical Applications
  • Therapeutic Devices and Closed-loop Systems
  • Wireless and Energy Harvesting/Scavenging Technology

Call for Papers

The complete 4-page paper (in standard IEEE double-column format), including the title, authors' names, aliations and e-mail addresses, as well as a short abstract and an optional demonstration video link (3 minutes max) are requested during submission. Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format through http://www.biocas2016.org.

Important dates:

  • Special Session Proposal Due: June 5, 2016
  • Paper Submission Due: June 15, 2016
  • Demonstration Proposal Due: July 31, 2016
  • Author Notication Date: August 31, 2016
  • Author Registration Date: September 15, 2016
  • Conference Dates: October 17-19, 2016
  • Post Conference Workshop Dates: October 20-21, 2016

Highlights:

Selected BioCAS2016 papers will be published in the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems Special Issue.

BrainCAS, a 2-day post conference workshop, will be held in Hangzhou (a beautiful city near Shanghai) from Oct. 20-21, 2016. More details of BrainCAS will be available in BioCAS2016 website soon.

New book by Amir Zjajo: Brain-Machine Interface

  • Friday, 11 March 2016

low-power analog front-end circuits for brain signal conditioning and quantization and digital back-end circuits for signal detection

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Happy 2016!

  • Thursday, 14 January 2016

Here are some pictures of the New Year Reception of the Microelectronics department

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Summa Cum Laude for Alessandro Urso

  • Wednesday, 30 December 2015

Alessandro received this honorary distiction from the University of Ferrara, Italy. His supervisors were Gianluca Setti and Wouter Serdijn. Alessandro will continue his studies as a PhD student at Delft University of Technology, working on wireless enerfy harvesting for autonomous wireless sensor nodes.

How do you become Best Lecturer of TU Delft?

  • Tuesday, 8 December 2015

On 26th November, the Best Lecturer of the year 2015 was chosen. 8 nominees, one from each faculty, competed for the prize. But how do you ?become? lecturer of the year of lecturer or your faculty? How does the lecturer of the year differentiates him or herself from the other lecturers? Is the interaction with the students different and what is the ?Golden tip??

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TU Delft Female Fellowship Tenure Track Openings

  • Friday, 9 October 2015

Academic openings at all professor levels

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Optogenetics: lighting the way to the future

  • Thursday, 1 October 2015

The brain is the mystery of the human body. Neurons, as primary units of the nervous system, are joined together into a complicated biological interconnected network. A conventional method to manipulate the neural performance within this network is to use drugs that alter the chemical balance of the brain. However, a crucial aspect of the nervous systems is the electrical signalling between the neurons. Bioelectronics has advanced the neural modulation techniques beyond the conventional methods by developing electrical brain stimulation tools. Electrical brain stimulation is truly beneficial to understand the mechanism underlying neural behaviour, and develop novel therapeutic methods. Optogenetics is another breakthrough method in neural stimulation techniques, which has opened up entirely new avenues of research opportunities in the fields of neuroscience and bioelectronics. In this article, the basic principles of optogenetics and a state-of-the-art bioelectronics application for the treatment of epilepsy are described.

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ISCAS 2015 Keynote Presentation Ronald Dekker online

  • Monday, 13 July 2015

Ronald Dekker's Keynote: ?From Chips for the Living to Living Chips?

Micro-fabricated devices are finding their way to the frontend of medical equipment, where they are the interface between body, or in general living tissue, and machine. They enable better and cheaper diagnostic equipment, they add ?eyes and ears? to minimally invasive instruments such as laparoscopic instruments and catheters, they allow for un-obtrusive monitoring of body functions, they add functionality to implants, and they enable the development of better and personalized medicines. Despite their great promise it has been proven difficult to bring these devices out of the laboratory phase into production. One of the reasons is the lack of a suitable fabrication infrastructure. Much more than standard CMOS or MEMS devices, these medical devices rely on the processing of novel materials, especially polymers, in combination with advanced molding, micro-fluidics, and assembly technologies. At the same time these devices have to be fabricated under strict quality control conditions in a certified production environment.

In the recently granted ECSEL project ?InForMed? a supply chain for the pilot fabrication of these medical devices is organized, which brings together key European technology partners in an integrated infrastructure linking research to pilot and high volume production. The pilot line is hosted by Philips Innovation Services, and open to third party users.

Speaker Biography:

Ronald Dekker received his MSc in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Eindhoven and his PhD from the Technical University of Delft. He joined Philips Research in 1988 where he worked on the development of RF technologies for mobile communication. Since 2000 his focus shifted to the integration of complex electronic sensor functionality on the tip of the smallest minimal invasive instruments such as catheters and guide-wires. In 2007 he was appointed part time professor at the Technical University of Delft with a focus on Organ-on-Chip devices. He published in leading Journals and conferences and holds in excess of 50 patents.

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Wouter Serdijn on BNR Eye Openers

  • Saturday, 4 July 2015

Listen here for the recording.

The broadcast has been repeated on: Friday, July 10, at 19:30 hrs, Saturday, July 11 at 9:00 and 15:30 hrs and Sunday, July 12, at 9:00 and 18:30 hrs; also via the App.

Host of Eyeopeners is Marijke Roskam.

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Wouter Serdijn Teacher of the Year 2014-2015

  • Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Rationale behind his award is that Wouter Serdijn is "a good lecturer, is involved with his students and conducts important research himself".

This is actually not the first time that Wouter got elected Teacher of the Year. In 2001 and 2004 he already won the cup. This, however, is the first time that he also has been elected Teacher of the Year for the whole faculty, a new distinction that was established in 2012.

Wouter Serdijn is professor in Biomedical Circuits and Systems and heads the Bioelectronics Section at EEMCS.

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ISCAS 2015 in Lisbon a big success

  • Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Franco Maloberti, President Elect of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society mentioned as highlights of the conference:

- The excellent location and organization: "Let me congratulate the General Chairs, Technical Program Chairs and organizing staff with the perfect flow of things and outstanding service to our community";

- Good participation to sessions and good quality of papers;

- Beneficial socialization during coffee breaks and social events; and

- Very successful side events (Special events, John Choma Commemoration, PhD Gold Young Professional, Women in CAS, Conference Leadership).

Wouter Serdijn No. 12 in Vrij Nederland's Nerd 101

  • Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Wouter Serdijn (head of the Bioelectronics Section at Delft University of Technology) ended up No. 2 in the category "wearables". To him, wearables are just an intermediate station in the journey into implantables. A special kind of implantables, called "electroceuticals" will complement traditional pharmaceuticals and will help treating patients that suffer from neurological disorders better. On June 10, an item about him and his work appeared in Vrij Nederland. Together with 10 other nerds he ended no. 12 in VN's Nerd 101, the shortlist of the 101 most interesting technologists, inventors and botchers of the Netherlands.

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Leo de Vreede most entrepreneurial TU Delft scientist

  • Friday, 22 May 2015

During the annual YES!Delft Network Event on 18 May, the Delft Entrepreneurial Scientist Awards (DESA) were presented for researchers who encourage entrepreneurship. Dr Leo de Vreede of the Department of Microelectronics (EEMCS) was named the most entrepreneurial scientist at TU Delft.

Leo de Vreede is an associate professor at the Electronics Research Laboratory. In 2010, he founded the company Anteverta-mw. Building on the knowledge from his PhD research, the company developed a device that drastically accelerates and improves continuity testing of base stations for mobile telephony. As a result, data transfer is improved and energy consumption reduced. The TU Delft spin-off was taken over earlier this year by the American company Maury Microwave Corporation.

Jury chairman and President of the Executive Board Dirk Jan van den Berg praised De Vreede for his involvement with many spin-off companies and patent requests. The scientists received �valorisation bonuses� of �15,000 and �5,000 respectively.

Presentation on electroceuticals: getting better with electricity

  • Wednesday, 6 May 2015

On May 6, 2015, Collegerama of TU Delft made video recordings of the lecture Wouter Serdijn gave on Electroceuticals.

Electroceuticals are the electronic counterparts of pharmaceuticals and are miniature electronic devices that interact with the body in an electrical fashion.

In this talk Wouter Serdijn discusses: - neurostimulation and the need to make neurostimulators smaller, more power efficient and more intelligent; - optogenetic neuromodulation and the need to make this new neuromodulation modality operate in a closed-loop fashion; - neurosensing devices to make neurostimulators intelligent and thereby adjust themselves to the therapeutical needs of the patient; - autonomous wireless sensor nodes that can measure temperature or the electrocardiogram without the need for a battery; - an outlook into the future of electroceuticals with the promise to treat a larger variety of neurological and brain disorders better. Click here to start watching the video and slides: https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/Mediasite/Play/cc7888beb88349c1a60c1414476b577a1d?catalog=528e5b24-a2fc-4def-870e-65bd84b28a8c

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Delftse promovendus ontwikkelt volgende generatie neurostimulator

  • Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Marijn van Dongen is vandaag aan de TU Delft gepromoveerd op het chipontwerp voor een neurostimulator die klein genoeg is om in de schedel aan te brengen, dicht bij de plek waar gestimuleerd moet worden. Normaal gesproken worden neurostimulatoren uitgevoerd in de vormfactor van een pacemaker; vanwege hun afmetingen worden ze in de borst ge?mplanteerd en via onderhuidse draden verbonden met de elektroden in het hersenweefsel. Deze leads zijn echter gevoelig voor slijtage.

De batterij is echter een beperkende factor bij het miniaturiseren van deze apparaten. Daarom zocht de promovendus naar alternatieve stimulatiescenario?s die minder energie gebruiken. Uit simulaties en in vitro-proeven bleek het gebruik van hoogfrequente series stroompulsjes een veelbelovende aanpak. Dit soort pulsjes kunnen op een energie-effici?nte manier worden opgewekt dankzij het principe van een geschakelde voeding; een prototype van de neurostimulator was een factor drie zuiniger dan de huidige stimulatoren. Bovendien kan de pulsgebaseerde aanpak verschillende doelen tegelijkertijd activeren en daarmee de doelmatigheid van de behandeling verhogen.

De onderzoekers denken dat kleinere stimulatoren uiteindelijk breder ingezet kunnen worden. Op het moment wordt neurostimulatie vaak nog gezien als laatste redmiddel bij chronische aandoeningen als Parkinson, depressie, pijn en tinnitus. Er is echter nog een scala aan andere mogelijke toepassingen, zoals zoals epilepsie, verslavingen, migraine en dementie.

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Congratulations to Prof. dr. Sarro with her royal honour

  • Friday, 24 April 2015

Professor Lina Sarro, professor of micro-electronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, has been made a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, in The Hague.

She received the award because of her original research that resulted in a large scientific body of work and because of her in-depth involvement with her many students. Her pioneering work in the 1980s in the field of infrared sensors led to international acclaim. Since 1987, she has been in charge of research into micro and nanosystems (MEMS and NEMS) at the Else Kooi Lab, which was known previously as the Dimes Institute for Microsystems and Nanoelectronics.

Professor Sarro has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals and has received awards for her work on several occasions. In 2004, she received the Eurosensors Fellow Award, in 2007 the AISEM Career Award, and in 2012 the IEEE Sensors Council Meritorious Award. She is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She has been praised on account of both her scientific work and her unfailing commitment to providing teaching of a high standard.

To her students, from both inside and outside the Netherlands, she is a figurehead. This applies perhaps in particular to female students and academics. In 2005, Professor Sarro became the first female to join the TU Delft Council of Professors. She is dedicated to emphasising the role of female scientists, in the conviction that it is a waste to use only half of our scientific assets. Her outstanding scientific reputation ensures that her voice is heard in this, and in other issues.

Medical Delta speeds up development of cochlear implants

  • Friday, 27 March 2015

Uit ?De Audiciens?, februari 2015: ?CI?s (cochleaire implantaten, Red.) volop in ontwikkeling.

Het is een traditie, de refereeravond van KNO/Centrum voor Audiologie en Hoorimplantaten (CAHIL) in het LUMC op de tweede donderdag van het jaar.

Ook op 8 januari 2015 zit de collegezaal weer vol. Het is dan ook een bijeenkomst waar een aantal disciplines uit de hoorbranche samenkomen. KNO-artsen, audiologen, akoepedisten, audiciens, fabrikanten en anderen luisteren naar voordrachten die inzicht geven in nieuwe ontwikkelingen op audiologisch gebied.

De avond wordt geopend door prof. dr. ir. J.H.M. Frijns, hoofd CAHIL. (?) In het kader van de Medical Delta (een samenwerkingsverband tussen het Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, de TU Delft en het LUMC in Leiden voor de ontwikkeling van medische technologie) is er een presentatie van Johan de Vos die als arts-onderzoeker KNO onderzoek verricht naar nieuwe technologie voor cochleaire implantaten. Onder begeleiding van Wouter Serdijn en Paddy French hebben drie promovendi van de TU een meetversterker (Cees Jeroen Bes), een elektrode ontwerp (Nishant Lawant) en een stimulatorchip (Wannaya Ngamkham) ontwikkeld. Deze technologie wordt onder leiding van Johan Frijns en Jeroen Briaire in het LUMC geimplanteerd en getest door Johan de Vos. Tevens ontwikkelt het LUMC nieuwe meetmethodes voor het terugmeten van de respons van de gehoorzenuw (Dick Biesheuvel).?

Lees meer hier: http://bioelectronics.tudelft.nl/~wout/documents/news/lumc_refereeravond_20150108.pdf

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10 years of BioCAS, the Biomedical Circuits and Systems Symposium

  • Thursday, 11 December 2014

Taco Kindt, Cees-Jeroen Bes and Hossein Tajeddin win 2nd prize in Proof-It Award contest

  • Wednesday, 12 November 2014

During the Proof-It Awards session of Medical Delta at the Border Sessions, Nov. 12 in The Hague, The Netherlands, the team of FetalStar (Taco Kindt, Cees Jeroen Bes (Section Bioelectronics) and Hossein Tajeddin (HealtTech)) won the 2nd prize. Congratulations! The 2nd prize will allow them to continue working on their revolutionary fetal ECG monitoring concept and bring it closer to a prototype.

Wouter Serdijn at the Border Sessions 2014; the international technology festival

  • Thursday, 23 October 2014

As part of the Crossing Borders Festival in The Hague, Wouter Serdijn will give a talk on the Future of Implantable Technology at the Border Sessions, Nov. 12, 13:00 hrs.

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Vacancy: assistant professor in bioelectronics

  • Friday, 17 October 2014

In the Section Bioelectronics of Delft University of Technology, there is an opening for a tenure track position in bioelectronics.

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Cees-Jeroen Bes and Wouter Serdijn on Dutch TV station RTL4

  • Thursday, 25 September 2014

On Sept. 25, the RTL4 TV program "Editie NL" made a news item on chipping humans. Cees-Jeroen Bes and Wouter Serdijn offered a glimpse into the future.

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Chapter on RF energy harvesting published

  • Thursday, 28 August 2014

Andre Mansano, Mark Stoopman and Wouter Serdijn contributed a chapter on RF energy harvesting to an Elsevier book, entitled "Wearable Sensors: Fundamentals, Implementation and Applications", which appeared this month.

Both BioCAS 2014 papers have been accepted

  • Saturday, 9 August 2014

The paper by Andre Mansano and Yongjia Li and the paper by Marijn van Dongen et al. have been accepted for BioCAS 2014. Congratulations!

An electronic eye on the children

  • Thursday, 31 July 2014

Article in Vrij Nederland (in Dutch), d. Aug. 2, by Marjolein van Trigt about Child Tracking. In there, Wouter Serdijn explains the possibilities, impossibilities and implications of an implantable RFID child tracker. Lees meer op: http://www.vn.nl/Archief/Samenleving/Artikel-Samenleving/Een-elektronisch-oogje-op-de-kinderen.htm#

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Efficacy of high frequency switched-mode stimulation in activating Purkinje cells; article published

  • Thursday, 3 July 2014

We pre-published an important paper on a new neurostimulation paradigm on arXiv. The paper can be found here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.7185v1.pdf.

Abstract: This paper investigates the efficacy of high frequency switched-mode neural stimulation. Instead of using a constant stimulation amplitude, the stimulus is switched on and off repeatedly with a high frequency (up to 100kHz) duty cycled signal. By means of tissue modeling that includes the dynamic properties of both the tissue material as well as the axon membrane, it is first shown that switched-mode stimulation depolarizes the cell membrane in a similar way as classical constant amplitude stimulation. These findings are subsequently verified using in vitro experiments in which the response of a Purkinje cell is measured due to a stimulation signal in the molecular layer of the cerebellum of a mouse. For this purpose a stimulator circuit is developed that is able to produce a monophasic high frequency switched-mode stimulation signal. The results confirm the modeling by showing that switched-mode stimulation is able to induce similar responses in the Purkinje cell as classical stimulation using a constant current source. This conclusion opens up possibilities for novel stimulation designs that can improve the performance of the stimulator circuitry. Care has to be taken to avoid losses in the system due to the higher operating frequency.

Authored by: M.N. van Dongen, F.E. Hoebeek, S.K.E. Koekkoek, C.I. De Zeeuw, W.A. Serdijn

BioCAS 2013 "one of the most successful editions"

  • Friday, 27 June 2014

9th IEEE BioCAS Advancing Healthcare Technology Conference

By Mohamad Sawan

The 9th IEEE BioCAS Advancing Healthcare Technology Conference was held in the Inntel Hotel, located at the river Meuse in the city centre of Rotterdam, the Netherlands from October 31th to November 2nd, 2013.

Nowadays, BioCAS illustrates a new wave of circuits and systems inspired by biology and healthcare, life sciences, physical sciences and engineering with application to medical problems. This BioCAS brought a strong collaboration between the CAS society and biotechnologies by facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations among scientists, engineers and medical researchers and practitioners to solve complex problems and innovating in rapidly growing area of research. The multidisciplinary approach of BioCAS 2013 enabled the CAS community to benefit from live demonstrations, tutorials, special and regular sessions, all covering a wide range of topics: biofeedback and electrical stimulation, bioinspired circuits and systems, biomedical imaging technologies and image processing, BioMEMs, biomedical instrumentations, biosensors, bioactuators, bio-signal processing, body area networks/body sensor networks, electronics for brain science and brain machine interfaces, implantable electronics, innovative circuits and systems for medical applications, lab-on-chip, medical information systems and wireless and energy harvesting /scavenging technology in medicine.

Figure 1

BioCAS 2013 was one of the most successful editions, three keynotes of world renowned experts were given: 1) Dr. Rudy Lauwereins, Vice President at IMEC, Belgium, explained how the combination of advanced process technology, heterogeneous integration, design methodology and application knowledge enables important breakthroughs in health care, diagnostics, monitoring and therapeutic cure. 2) Dr. Dirk de Ridder, Neurological Foundation professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Otago in New Zealand and Founder of the Brain Research center for Advanced, Innovative and Interdisciplinary Neuromodulation, addressed how engineers, basic and clinical neuroscientists and neurosurgeons should collaborate to develop the next generation of 3rd millennium neuromodulation devices. 3)Dr. John Parker of NICTA, the University of New South Wales and Saluda Medical Pty, all three in Australia, described how closed loop control of amplitude provides significant improvements in spinal cord stimulation to relieve pain.

The first day, the conference included four tutorials: 1) Dr. Shuenn-Yuh Lee presented Low Power Wireless ECG Acquisition and Cardiac Stimulation SOCs for Body Sensor Networks. 2) Drs. Trac D. Tran, Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Yuanming Suo, Jie Zhang, and Sang Chin presented how can compressed sensing help realize very-large scale embedded microelectrode arrays (VLSE-MEA). 3) Drs. Rahul Samant, Vivian Mushahwar, Ralph Etienne-Cummings, and Kevin Mazurek offered a tutorial about smart neural prostheses: design, development, and current state of neural prosthetic devices. 4) Dr. Ruud Vullers presented smart systems for healthcare and wellness.

Figure 2

Authors submitted 163 regular contributions (169 including those presented in special and demo sessions). These contributions are originated from 31 countries; 40% from Europe, 40% from Asia/Pacific and 20% from US and Canada. 93 high-quality papers were accepted and included in the final program, which was organized in 11 lecture and 2 poster sessions. In addition to the regular program, a special session on Implantable electronics for neural recording and stimulation was presented. BioCAS uses to pay particular attention on organizing great quality tutorials and posters, the later provided opportunity for lively discussions and productive exchange of ideas. The entire review process was carried out using ePapers, a professional on-line, web-based review system, involving 277 reviewers who have completed 600 reviews giving on average 3.6 reviews for each paper.

The final program provided ample opportunity for scientific discussions and time for site seeing and social interactions. Breaks, receptions, banquet, lunch times brought the scientific community closer. The standing rooms of the conference were a testament to the incredible quality of this year BioCAS. Detailed program and pictures of the conference, courtesy of the IEEE BioCAS local committee, are available at the IEEE BioCAS website (http://www.biocas2013.org).

The leadership of Dr. Wouter Serdijn, and Dr. Firat Yazicioglu, General co-chairs, as well as Dr. Gianluca Setti, and Tor Sverre (Bassen) Lande, Technical program co-chairs, guaranteed the success of the conference organization. These experienced colleagues were supported by several graduate students and the event was sponsored and supported by the IEEE, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS), the IEEE Electronics in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), Delft University of Technology, IMEC Belgium, Advanced Bionics, the Biomedical Electronics Foundation and SystematIC.

Figure 3

The banquet of the conference took place on board of a modern and luxurious ship, where attendees enjoyed a unique dining experience and stunning scenery of the many architectural highlight of Rotterdam while the ship cruises around the city and Europe's largest port. In addition to an unforgettable Dinner, the committee delivered one of society best paper awards to one of the Authors who Selected BioCAS to receive his award.

The next BioCAS conference is sponsored by the ?cole Polytechnique F?d?ral de Lausanne (EPFL) and will be held on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lausanne, Switzerland on 22 to 24 October 2014.

Both ESSCIRC papers have been accepted

  • Friday, 27 June 2014

The papers of Yao Liu (on a phase-domain AGC for Bluetooth LE) and Andre Mansano (on an autonomous wireless temperature tag) have both been accepted for presentation at the upcoming European Solid-State Circuits Conference.

Wouter Serdijn representing IEEE in Brussels as a member of the IEEE ICT Working Group

  • Friday, 27 June 2014

Wouter Serdijn (Section Bioelectronics) has been elected and appointed by the IEEE Board of Directors to serve on the IEEE Working Group on ICT. Main objective of this working group is to increase IEEE?s presence and visibility on EU issues relating to ICT and provide the technical know-how to be integrated into EU policy. ?As IEEE is the world's largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity, operates transnationally and in a neutral fashion and has the technical competence in this domain, it is only natural that IEEE gives advice on ICT technological matters and acts as a sounding board?, Wouter says. In the IEEE Working Group on ICT, 14 members from various EU member states are active.

ISCAS 2014 a big success!

  • Thursday, 26 June 2014

Wouter Serdijn (Section Bioelectronics) served as Technical Program Chair for this year's edition of ISCAS. Next year's edition will be held in Lisbon, Portugal. For this edition Wouter Serdijn will change hats and be General Chair.

Analog Integrated Circuit Design more than 10,000 page views in 2013

  • Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Open CourseWare course Analog Integrated Circuit Design (ET4252) received more than 10,000 page views in 2013 and is the No. 2 OCW course in Microelectronics

More ...

The Bioelectronics weblog

  • Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Visit the weblog of the Section Bioelectronics at: http://bme.weblog.tudelft.nl/

More ...

Agenda

Mastermarket

  • Friday, 9 February 2024
  • 15:30-18:00
  • HB20.150

The MS3/ELCA Mastermarket

MS3/ELCA groups

Dear Students,

Get ready for a journey into the world of cutting-edge research in RF technology, radar & communication!

On February 9, we are organizing the MS3/ELCA Mastermarket. On this occasion we, the MS3 and ELCA sections, will inform you about the Master thesis opportunities in our groups, and demonstrate our research with actual measurements, presenting processed experimental results and showing the added value of this research for applications such as automotive radar, 5G/6G, health and well-being, weather and climate change. As RF systems for radars and communication are sources of huge data, we also demonstrate AI capabilities.

We're opening the doors to our measurement labs: the Earl McCune Labs (21st floor), the anechoic chamber (22nd floor), the mm-wave radar lab (22nd floor), and the surveillance radars (23rd floor and roof).

Mark your calendars for 15:30, and meet us in room HB20.150.

We start with a few short presentations followed by the tour and then we will enjoy the pizza and discuss more!

Please send an email to EWI-ME-Secr@tudelft.nl to let us know you will join (and we can make sure there is enough pizza ;-))

 We look forward meeting you!
The MS3 & ELCA sections

Tinnitus Symposium

  • Tuesday, 6 February 2024
  • 12:30-17:00
  • TU Delft Aula Congress Center

The Sounds of Progress -- Advancing Tinnitus Science, Technology, Solutions and Relief

Dirk de Ridder, Joop van Gent, Mark Janssen, Gerard Borst, Wouter Serdijn

Tinnitus research has ignited social and clinical interest, reflecting the growing number of sufferers worldwide. The demand for innovative strategies and therapies to combat tinnitus is at an all-time high. That's why we're excited to invite you to our inaugural symposium, where we aim to bridge the gap between seasoned scientists, emerging researchers, and dedicated clinicians, all of whom are committed to exploring the latest breakthroughs, sharing ideas, and addressing the challenges in the field.

Participate in a profound learning opportunity at the inaugural tinnitus symposium. Get ready for a dynamic, interdisciplinary gathering where the exchange of knowledge will kindle fresh insights that can be immediately applied to advance both research and clinical practice.

Additional information ...

THz Symposium

  • Thursday, 25 -- Thursday, 25 January 2024
  • 09:30-17:00
  • Lecture Hall D@ta, 36.HB.01.630

Dutch Symposium on Terahertz Science and Technology - 3rd Edition


You are cordially invited to join us for the third edition of the Dutch Terahertz Symposium on January 25, 2024. It is a co-organized event between the Delft and Eindhoven University of Technology. With these series of symposiums, we aim to create an environment to exchange information and allow the Dutch Terahertz community to find collaborations and funding opportunities.

 

The 2024 Dutch Terahertz Symposium aims to bring together the Dutch research community and industry interested in the field of terahertz science and technology. There will be six featured talks from both academic and industrial institutions about the latest developments in the field. You can find the list of speakers and topics attached to this email. There will be plenty of opportunities for interaction with each other and inspired further community building.

 

Save the date to join a full day of interesting presentations, Q&As, and panel discussions!

Additional information ...

Signal Processing Seminar

  • Thursday, 14 December 2023
  • 11:00-12:00
  • HB 17.140

Error-correcting codes and cryptography: from theory to practice

Xinmiao Zhang
Ohio State University

Error-correcting codes (ECCs) and cryptography schemes are indispensable to the reliability and security of numerous classic and emerging systems. Advanced ECCs play essential roles in the performance of 5G/6G wireless communications, hyper-scale distributed storage, in/near-memory computing, and quantum computing. They are also key enablers of high-density next-generation memories and wafer-scale integration, which are important pillars of the CHIPS Act. With the development of new technologies, such as quantum computers and cloud computing, traditional cryptography schemes are no longer secure and/or pose privacy concerns. There are imminent needs for post-quantum cryptography and homomorphic encryption for privacy-preserving cloud computing. Protecting the circuit chips implementing advanced functions from counterfeiting is also necessary to preserve the semiconductor supremacy achieved by the CHIPS Act.

This talk presents our recent contributions on related topics. Efficient and high-speed generalized integrated interleaved ECC decoders are developed to meet the tight latency and excellent error-correcting capability requirements of next-generation hyper-speed memories. Code construction and decoder designs are jointly optimized to enable low-latency failure recovery and continued scaling of distributed storage. Our generalized logic locking includes many previous designs as special cases and achieves better resilience towards various attacks. Logic locking that can effectively protect chips implementing fault-tolerant functions, such as machine learning, are also developed by exploiting algorithmic specifics. Last by not least, high-speed and low-complexity hardware accelerators are designed for homomorphic encryption and post-quantum cryptography.

Biography

Xinmiao Zhang received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a Professor at the Ohio State University. She was a Senior Technologist at Western Digital/SanDisk 2013-2017. Prior to that, she was a Timothy E. and Allison L. Schroeder Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University. Prof. Zhang’s research spans the areas of VLSI architecture design, digital storage and communications, cryptography, security, and signal processing.

 

Prof. Zhang is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award 2009, the College of Engineering Lumley Research Award at The Ohio State University 2022, the Best Paper Award at ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI 2004, and Best Paper Award at International SanDisk Technology Conference 2016. She authored “VLSI Architectures for Modern Error-Correcting Codes” (CRC Press, 2015), and co-edited “Wireless Security and Cryptography: Specifications and Implementations” (CRC Press, 2007). Prof. Zhang was elected the Vice President-Technical Activities of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) 2022-2023 and served on the Board of Governors of CASS 2019-2021. She was also the Chair (2021-2022) and a Vice-Chair (2017-2020) of the Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC) of the IEEE Communications Society.  She served on the technical program and organization committees of many conferences, including ISCAS, ICC, GLOBECOM, SiPS, GlobalSIP, MWSCAS, and GLSVLSI. She has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I (TCAS-I) 2010-2019 and IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems since 2019. She will be the Associate Editor-in-Chief of TCAS-I 2024-2025.

Microelectronics Research Day 2023

  • Thursday, 9 November 2023
  • 09:30-17:30
  • EEMCS

Microelectronics Research Day 2023


TU Delft Microelectronics Research Day
Fully booked!
Registering 2023 not for possible anymore

Additional information ...

EE-NL Day

  • Wednesday, 8 November 2023
  • 10:30-17:30
  • EEMCS

EE-NL Day


EE-NL Day

Additional information ...

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Wednesday, 27 September 2023
  • 12:00-14:00
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Pitch-Matched Integrated Transceiver Circuits for High-Resolution 3-D Neonatal Brain Monitoring

Peng Guo

Peng Guo will defend his PhD thesis entitled

Pitch-Matched Integrated Transceiver Circuits for High-Resolution 3-D Neonatal Brain Monitoring

on Wednesday, Sept. 27th. The layman's talk will be at 12:00, the defence starts at 12:30.

The thesis can be downloaded from the TU Delft repository. Peng's work was part of the MIFFY project.

Livestream of the defence: link

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Nico de Jong

Abstract: This thesis presents the design and implementation of integrated ultrasound transceivers for use in transfontanelle ultrasonography (TFUS). Two generations of ultrasound transceiver ASICs integrated with PZT transducer arrays intended for TFUS are presented. In the first generation, a novel AFE design that combines an LNA with the continuous TGC function is realized in a bid to mitigate the gain-switching and T/R switching artifacts. Besides, a new current-mode micro-beamforming design based on boxcar integration (BI) is also implemented to reduce the channel count within a compact layout. In the second generation, the AFE is derived from the first version, while the design focuses on RX backend circuitry and channel-count reduction, including a passive BI-based µBF merged with a charge-sharing SAR ADC, which digitizes the delayed-and-summed signals, and a subsequent multi-level data link, which concatenates outputs of four ADCs. In total, a 128-fold reduction in channel count is finally achieved. The techniques we developed have established the groundwork and removed the initial barriers for an electronics architecture suitable for a wearable 3D TFUS device.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Wednesday, 23 August 2023
  • 13:30
  • Meeting room 1.2 (LB 01.190)

Optimizing sensitivity of capacitive pressure sensors through improved intraocular pressure monitoring

Kiana Griffith

Abstract: This thesis analyzes and describes a wearable pressure sensor to detect intraocular pressure and guide clinician diagnosis of glaucoma. Although glaucoma has many symptoms and risk factors, high intraocular pressure is the most predominant. A method to continuously and accurately record intraocular pressure measurements and fluctuations in a patient could lead to a more reliable glaucoma diagnosis and a better understanding of glaucoma progression. The proposed sensor consists of an ecoflex dielectric layer, between two graphene-silver nanowire spiral antenna electrodes which also act as the membrane structure. The sensor deflection depends on the intraocular pressure fluctuations; higher pressure leads to larger deflection values, therefore, larger capacitance change. The capacitance change leads to a shift of the resonant frequency, which is simulated in this thesis. The sensor must be smaller than 11 mm2 to fit on a commercial lens. Specifically, this thesis analyzes and simulates the effects of electrode thickness and shape on the overall performance of the sensor. The optimum geometry of the capacitive sensor is analyzed to maximize sensor sensitivity and quality factor, with a correlated frequency appropriate for a wearable lens. Using Computer Simulation Technology, the optimized antenna dimensions are spiral-electrodes with a plate thickness of 350μm, and 3 spiral revolutions; leading to an increase in sensitivity of 1.4 MHz/mmHg.

Symposium

  • Friday, 21 April 2023
  • 09:00-18:00
  • EEMCS - Lecture Hall Chip

Heterogeneous system integration - Driving the EU Chip Act ambitions

The Netherlands have a strong national ecosystem for quantum, photohics and semiconductor technologies, well connected to international key players. This symposium aims to build on this strength by intensifying collaboration among these domains.

Heterogeneous integration plays a crucial role in enabling future quantum, photonics and semiconductor technologies by creating new functionalities and business opportunities through the integration of different chips, technologies and materials into a single system.

This symposium will discuss the importance of heterogeneous integration and its potential for creating more industry and business value. It also aims to cultivate human resources for heterogeneous integration, further strengthening the Dutch ecosystem.

Join us to explore the exciting opportunities that heterogenous system integration can offer for the Dutch ecosystem and beyond, and to be part of the conversation on driving the EU Chip Act ambitions.

Guest lecture Gregor Lenz (SynSense)

  • Friday, 10 March 2023
  • 13:00-14:30
  • EEMCS, B36, Boole

Training robust computer vision models for interference on neuromorphic hardware

Gregor Lenz
SynSense

Event cameras output changes in illumination asynchronously rather than frames at a certain interval. For computer vision tasks, this data can be processed efficiently using spiking neural networks, which promise very-low-power applications. To harness the potential of such models, we have to execute them on specialised neuromorphic hardware. In this talk we look into the data, training and deployment stages that are related to SynSense's Speck chip and the challenges that arise in each of those.

Online Zoom Link to webinar:

https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/95129047745?pwd=MngzWHIxUXh0Y3dyLy9kcHBuaEU4Zz09. 

Any questions? Please contact the organizers:

Fabrizio Ottati: fabrizio.ottati@polito.it
Charlotte Frenkel: C.Frenkel@tudelft.nl

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Friday, 3 March 2023
  • 09:30-12:00
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Yannick Hopf - PhD Defence

Yannick Hopf

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

 

It is my pleasure to invite you to the defense of my PhD entitled:

Integrated Circuits for 3D High-Frame-Rate Intracardiac Echocardiography Probes

 

The event will take place in the Senaatszaal/Aula on Friday, 3rd March 2023 and the schedule is as follows:

  • 09:30 – Layman’s Talk
  • 10:00 – Defense
  • 11:30 – Reception

 

A link for online participation will be shared once provided by the Graduate School.

The thesis can be accessed via:

https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:7016e74d-c7df-42a8-8257-11326940ad7f

 

While this marks the end of my PhD project at TU Delft, I will still be around as a postdoc until mid April.

So while I would already like to thank you for all the support and good times, this is not a farewell yet and I’m looking forward to my remaining time in the team!

 

Best regards,

Yannick

Additional information ...

ME colloquium

  • Thursday, 23 February 2023
  • 16:15
  • EEMCS, Lecture hall Boole

What is cooking under the Tellegen lab?

Leon Abelmann

In nature atoms spontaneously grow into crystals, water molecules effortless assemble into snowflakes. However, when we build a car or a microprocessor, we have to put painstaking effort into getting the parts in the right places. Wouldn't it be possible just to provide the parts, and let Nature do the rest? This dream of self-assembly has been intriguing scientists for decades. 

We have been contributing to the dream with magnetically driven self-assembly. We have built a reactor in which we can study magnetically self-assembly in real time using millimetre sized magnets inside 3D-printed shells, we have shown that this system obeys basic thermodynamic laws, and we have grown the first three-dimensional crystals. The experiments are inexpensive and easy to design. Yet the data is very rich and taught us a lot on thermodynamics and self-assembly. 

https://youtu.be/xovOf65oTzE

Additional information ...

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 31 October 2022
  • 10:00-10:45
  • EWI - Meeting room 15.1

A Low-Noise Transimpedance Amplifier for Ultrasound Imaging with 40dB Continuous-Time Gain Compensation

Qian Wang

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for miniature 3D ultrasound probes. Time gain compensation (TGC) is required to provide continuously variable gain and compensate for the attenuated echo signal, resulting in decreased output dynamic range (DR). As TGC is embedded in the LNA, a power-hungry LNA is no longer needed to handle the full dynamic range of attenuated echo signal. Compared to prior art where TGC is applied after the LNA, this structure reduce die area and power consumption greatly.

The LNA with built-in TGC functionality is comprised of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) with exponentially increasing feedback resistive network. Since a transducer with a relatively high impedance is targeted, a TIA is utilized to interface with the tranducer and sense the signal current. TGC is implemented in a continuous fashion by tunable resistors so as to alleviate imaging artifacts associated with gain switching moments. The resistive feedback network is achieved by triode transistors with exponentially decreasing gate voltages. Three parallel branches of triode transistors are varied simultaneously to obtain 40dB gain range. Each branch consists of two back-to-back triodes to mitigate non-linearity related to the body effect.

The variable-gain loop amplifier employing a current-reuse topology enables constant closed-loop bandwidth in an energy-efficient way. The first stage is a fixed-gain stage with dynamic biasing to save power at the lowest gain setting. The next two stages are variable-gain stages with variable resistive loads. The load resistor is implemented in the same fashion as the TIA’s feedback resistor to achieve intrinsic gain matching. The last stage is a buffer to provide low output impedance for stability.

The LNA has been designed in 0.18 μm CMOS technology and occupies an estimated die area of 0.0339 mm2. The effective gain range is 40 dB with ±1 dB gain error. The LNA’s noise floor at the highest gain is below 1.15 pA/rt-Hz and its harmonic distortion is better than -40 dB. During 100 μs receive period, the total power consumption is 6mW from a ±0.9 V supply. The LNA featuring small area and high power efficiency is a promising circuit for miniature 3D ultrasound probes.

Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Thursday, 27 October 2022
  • 15:30-16:30
  • LB 1.010 Snijderszaal

Advances in Low-Field MRI Hardware Design and Data Processing

Rob Remis

In this talk we discuss several recent advances in low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). We focus on magnet and gradient coil design for a low-field MR scanner in which the strong background field is generated by permanent magnets (Halbach systems). These design problems are treated as inverse source problems, which are severely ill-posed in general. How to obtain approximate (regularized) solutions to these problems is discussed and the practical implementation of these solutions is addressed as well. Several processing algorithms that can handle compressed noisy MR input data are also presented and we illustrate the performance of these algorithms on simulated and measured low-field MR data.

Additional information ...

Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Thursday, 22 September 2022
  • 15:30-16:30
  • TBD

Sparsity-constrained Linear Dynamical Systems

Geethu Joseph

Abstract: At the intersection of control engineering and signal processing sits the upcoming field of sparse control and state estimation of linear dynamical systems. It deals with linear dynamical systems with control inputs having a few nonzero entries compared to their dimensions. Constraining the inputs to be sparse is often necessary to select a small subset of the available sensors or actuators at each time instant due to energy, bandwidth, or physical network constraints. Bringing together research from classical control theory and compressed sensing, the talk presents a comprehensive overview and critical insights into the conceptual foundations of sparsity-constrained systems, including the formulation, theory, and algorithms. We look at the concrete example of a budget-constrained external agent controlling the opinion of a social network.

Additional information ...

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Thursday, 15 September 2022
  • 12:00-13:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Advanced Measurement Techniques and Circuits for Array-Based Transit-Time Ultrasonic Flow Meters

Douwe van Willigen

This thesis describes the design, prototyping and evaluation of matrix-based clamp-on ultrasonic flow meters. Several new measurement techniques are presented as well as an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designed for accurate measurement of flow velocity with matrix transducers.

The influence of circuit topologies on the zero-flow performance of ultrasonic flow meters has been analyzed and an algorithm is presented to reduce the offset. With a linear transducer array, flow measurements have been performed via two different acoustic paths, demonstrating the ability to accurately measure flow with array transducers through a stainless-steel pipe wall. In order to improve signal quality, an ASIC has been designed that is able to drive and read-out 96 piezo transducer elements. The ASIC has been characterized electrically and flow measurements have been performed in combination with the linear transducer arrays.

Several new techniques, enabled using transducer arrays, have also been explored. By tapering the amplitude of the transmit signals, spurious waves can be suppressed. An auto-calibration technique has been developed that uses additional acoustic measurements to estimate the diameter of the pipe and the speed of sound in the pipe wall and liquid. Finally, a simulation study has been performed to explore the possibility of exploiting the beam-steering capabilities of transducer arrays to measure flow velocity profiles by using measurements obtained via multiple acoustic paths.

Thesis:
https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:e2f4b411-3d8e-4b93-b037-096009c59f61

Collegerama (live stream of the defence):
https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/571eb84f3e724d47b46df7e8d0eb3a7a1d

Additional information ...

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Tuesday, 13 September 2022
  • 12:00-13:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Integrated Transceiver Circuits for Catheter-based Ultrasound Probes and Wearable Ultrasound Patches

Mingliang Tan

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Ronald Dekker

Thesis: link

Collegerama link (live stream of the defence): link

Abstract: This thesis describes the design, prototyping, and experimental evaluation of transceiver ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) for catheter-based ultrasound probes and wearable ultrasound patches. Various circuit techniques are proposed to address requirements and implementation bottlenecks in these applications. Prototype chips are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques. To reduce the loading effect of micro-coaxial cables in an ICE probe based on capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs), an ASIC prototype including element-level high-voltage pulses and low-noise trans-impedance amplifiers has been implemented. Besides reducing the loading effect from micro-coaxial cables, ASICs play an important role in achieving cable-count reduction, which is crucial for 3-D imaging catheters, such as forward-looking IVUS probes. Circuit techniques are proposed to implement a prototype ASIC which only requires 4 cables to interface with a 2D piezoelectric transducer array. Additionally, to address the challenges in interface electronics for wearable ultrasound patches, a prototype ASIC is presented that contains 64 reconfigurable transceiver channels that can interface with different transducer elements by employing channel-parallelizing techniques.

Additional information ...

Special EI Colloquium

  • Tuesday, 13 September 2022
  • 10:00-11:00
  • EWI - Lecture Hall F
Piero Tortoli, Michael Kraft

Profs. Piero Tortoli and Michael Kraft

Real-time High-Frame Rate imaging: Novel Methods and Applications

Prof. Piero Tortoli
Microelectronics Systems Design Laboratory
University of Florence, Italy

Medical imaging is increasingly based on High-Frame-Rate (HFR) methods, which are in principle capable of producing one frame (or even one data volume) per transmission event. However, achieving such a goal in real-time implicitly involves the transfer and processing of huge amount of data at high rates, and this can be done only through an appropriate experimental setup.

In this talk, the main characteristics of the hardware-based open scanner ULA-OP 256 are briefly reviewed, and its recent advancements, such as the data transfer acceleration obtained through an architectural change, and the possible expansion toward the control of an unlimited number of probe elements, are reported in detail. The “virtual real-time” modality will also be described as ideal to obtain the best performance from specific HFR imaging modalities. Finally, the combination of ULA-OP 256 with properly designed sparse 2-D arrays will be shown suitable for the investigation of full volumes. The talk will be concluded with the presentation of experimental results in a few sample applications, including multi-plane imaging, HFR CFM and HFR vector Doppler.

 

Micro- and Nanosystems at ESAT, KU Leuven

Prof. Michael Kraft
ESAT, Micro- and Nano-Systems
KU Leuven, Belgium

This seminar will give an brief overview of the activities in micro- and nanosystems at the Electrical Engineering Department (ESAT) of KU Leuven. It will describe the available infrastructure and give a short overview of current research activities in the division Micro- and Nanosystems (MNS), which currently comprises 24 PhD students, 4 postdoctoral researchers and 2 technicians.

A selection of current active projects and recent highlights will be presented, including work on:

  • Coupled resonators for mass sensing applications
  • Piezoelectric ultrasound technology arrays for medical imaging and underwater communication
  • Micromachined probes for neuro recording and stimulation
  • Multi-parameter sensing chip for bioreactor condition monitoring
  • Genetic Algorithm for the design of MEMS devices (accelerometers and microgrippers)

Finally, the newly founded Leuven Institute for Micro- and Nano Integration (LIMNI) will be briefly introduced.

Note: This Colloquium precedes the PhD defence of Mingliang Tan, which will take place in the Aula on the same day at 12:00 (layman’s talk), 12:30-13:30 (defence). More information can be found here.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 30 August 2022
  • 10:00-10:45
  • EWI - Meeting room 16.1

A Monolithic Photoplethysmogram (PPG) Sensor

Jixuan Mou
Silicon Integrated

A photoplethysmogram (PPG) is an important optically-obtained bio-sginal that enables convenient daily monitoring of heart rate and Oxygen saturation (SpO2). Most state-of-the-art PPG sensing systems require an off-chip photodiode, and the photodiode’s output parasitic capacitance limits the power-noise trade offs. The objective of this project is to implement a monolithic low-power PPG sensor for heart-rate detection. A novel sensing system has been developed, which has arrays of photogate imagers as front-ends and a compact successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter serving as the readout circuit. The readout power consumption is 0.64 uW at a sampling rate of 40 Hz. The minimum required LED power consumption is predicted to be 3 uW according to the post-layout simulation. The die area is 6.05 mm2 including the pads. Compared with prior art, the readout power consumption reduces by four times and the die area reduces by 3 times. The chip was submitted for fabrication in June in TSMC180nm.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 21 June 2022
  • 09:30-10:30

Monolithically fabricated flexible graphene-based active implant

Tawab Karim

Additional information ...

Presentation Prof. E.J. Chichilnisky (Princeton-Stanford)

  • Tuesday, 7 June 2022
  • 16:00-17:00
  • EEMCS, B36, lecture hall Chip

Toward a High-fidelity Artificial Retina

Prof. E.J. Chichilnisky

Toward a High-fidelity Artificial Retina

Electronic interfaces to the retina represent an exciting development in science, engineering, and medicine – an opportunity to exploit our knowledge of neural circuitry and function to restore or even enhance vision. However, although existing devices demonstrate proof of principle in treating blindness, they produce limited visual function. Some of the reasons for this can be understood based on the precise and specific neural circuitry that mediates visual signaling in the retina. Consideration of this circuitry suggests that future devices may need to operate at single-cell, single-spike resolution in order to subserve naturalistic visual function. I will show large-scale multi-electrode recording and stimulation data from the macaque and human retina indicating that, in some cases, such resolution is possible. I will also discuss cases in which it fails, and propose that we can improve artificial vision in such conditions by incorporating our knowledge of the visual system in bi-directional devices that adapt to the host neural circuitry. Finally, I will introduce the Stanford Artificial Retina Project, aimed at developing a retinal implant that more faithfully reproduces the neural code of the retina, and briefly discuss the implications for scientific investigation and for other neural interfaces of the future.

Bio: Prof. E.J. Chichilnisky trained in mathematics and neuroscience at Princeton and Stanford Universities, and began his independent research career at the Salk Institute. He joined the faculty at Stanford in 2013 where he is the John R. Adler Professor of Neurosurgery, and Professor of Ophthalmology. The goal of his research is to understand how the neural circuitry of the retina encodes visual information, and to use this knowledge in the development of artificial retinas for treating incurable blindness. His lab now focuses on the mission of the Artificial Retina Project.

Sensors and CMOS Interface Electronics

  • Monday, 9 -- Friday, 20 May 2022

Would you like to learn about smart sensors and interface circuits? Register for our course “Sensors and CMOS Interface Electronics”, co-organized by TU Delft and MEAD Education.

The course will take place online, on 8 days between May 9 and May 20, with two lectures per day timed conveniently for participation from anywhere on the globe.

Topics include smart-sensor design, calibration techniques, references, offset-cancellation, analog-to-digital conversion, instrumentation amplifiers and energy harvesting. Moreover, the course features lectures by experts in the field dedicated to smart inertial sensors, magnetic sensors, temperature sensors, image sensors, ultrasonic sensors, capacitive sensors, implantable medical devices and DNA microarrays.

Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Thursday, 24 February 2022
  • 16:30-05:00
  • Online via TEAMS

An inclusive EEMCS faculty: An emphatic approach.

Jorge Martinez

Our faculty consists of a vibrant and diverse community. Diversity is a catalyst that allows us to achieve broad knowledge, and a base upon we can drive scientific innovation and improve education.

Moreover, diversity is one of the core values of TUDelft and our faculty and comes with great responsibility. Without equality and inclusion diversity becomes an empty gesture. But realising a safe, equal and inclusive environment requires the participation of everyone in our community. It starts by having a dialog, stablish communication channels at different levels, and debunking taboos with respect to the visible and invisible differences among each other and our students. An empathic approach for this process can play a key role in realising this ambition.

In this colloquium Jorge talks about his experience within EDIT: EEMCS Diversity & Inclusion Team. Join us to know more about EDIT, and for an informal discussion on the current advancements on addressing issues like harassment, discrimination, and gender (in)equality. Or if you want to know what are the channels and means within our faculty and our University to reach for advice or help in case you encounter any issues related to these important topics.

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ME colloquium

  • Thursday, 25 November 2021
  • 15:30-17:00
  • Online via TEAMS

Microtechnologies for ultrasound neuromodulation: Gaining ground and losing size. /Towards single-cell resolution neural interfaces

Tiago Costa, Dante Muratore

Abstract Tiago da Costa 
Microtechnologies for ultrasound neuromodulation: Gaining ground and losing size.

Approximately one billion people worldwide suffer from a neurological disease. Up to 30% of patients that undergo pharmaceutical-based therapies eventually stop responding to the treatment. Alternatives to pharmaceutical medicines in the form of neuromodulation are either non-invasive but imprecise, with limited benefits to patients (transcranial magnetic and direct-current stimulation), or are effective but highly invasive (deep brain stimulation) with patient eligibility as low as 5%.
Low intensity focused ultrasound is a promising emerging neuromodulation modality to overcome the limitations mentioned above. Due to the unique combination of low-absorption in soft tissue and sub-millimeter wavelength, ultrasound waves can be focused with neuromodulatory intensity in deep nervous system regions with a high volumetric spatial resolution. However, ultrasound neuromodulation hardware is still in its infancy, often custom-built by adapting off-the-shelf transducers and electronics. These under-optimized solutions result in bulky and power inefficient stimulation technology, severely limiting the translation of ultrasound neuromodulation to clinical therapies for chronic neurological diseases.
This talk will describe my group’s research on microtechnologies for ultrasound neuromodulation. The overarching vision is to design wearable and minimally invasive ultrasound stimulation devices through power-efficient miniaturization of circuits and ultrasound transducers. In particular, I will talk about our efforts to develop two-dimensional ultrasound phased arrays for epidural brain stimulation and vagus nerve stimulation, which have the potential to directly translate into therapies for immunological diseases, epilepsy, and depression.

Abstract Dante Muratore

Towards single-cell resolution neural interfaces
Neural interfaces of the future will be used to help restore lost sensory capabilities (e.g., retina and cochlear implant), or restore lost motor capabilities of people with motor impairments (e.g., due to brainstem stroke, or spinal cord injury). They will also make it possible to augment human capabilities, including sensory acuity, control of complex devices, memory, attention and more. However, to realize this futuristic promise requires a major leap forward in how electronic devices interact with the nervous system. Current neural interfaces provide a coarse communication link that does not respect the single-cell specificity of the neural network they are targeting, indiscriminately activating or recording multiple cells at the same time. As a result, while still promising, current brain-machine interfaces provide only partial restoration of the lost ability.
In my group, we are developing a bidirectional neural interface capable of interfacing with tens of thousands of neurons at single-cell resolution for a high-resolution artificial retina. To do so, we are designing an implantable microsystem powered by a chip that can record and stimulate at single-cell resolution on >1000 thousand channels simultaneously while operating fully wirelessly (power and data). Today, I will give an overview of the project and present recent advances we made on the stimulation strategy. The artificial retina project is embedded in a consortium formed by TU Delft (electronics), Stanford University (neuroscience), and University of Washington (in-vivo electrophysiology).

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Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Thursday, 28 October 2021
  • 15:30-16:30
  • Microsoft Teams Meeting

On my personal journey into artificial intelligence

Justin Dauwels

In this presentation, I will start with a brief introduction to artificial intelligence (AI). I will then elaborate on two types of AI approaches that our research team is investigating: graphical models and neural networks. Next I will summarize some of the main research results of our group. I will review some of the applications of AI that we have been working on over the years, and will present some of our future research plans. I will also say a few words about the spin-off companies that have emerged from our research group. At last, I will conclude with a few thoughts on the potential impact of AI on society and will formulate a few important open research questions in the field of AI.

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PhD Thesis Defence

  • Monday, 13 September 2021
  • 14:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

In-pixel temperature sensors for dark current compensation of a CMOS image sensor

Accel Abarca Prouza

This thesis describes the integration of temperature sensors into a CMOS image sensor (CIS). The temperature sensors provide the in-situ temperature of the pixels as well as the thermal distribution of the pixel array. The temperature and the thermal distribution are intended to be used to compensate for dark current affecting the CIS. Two different types of in-pixel temperature sensors have been explored. The first type of temperature sensor is based on a substrate parasitic bipolar junction transistor (BJT). The second type of temperature sensor that has been explored is based on the nMOS source follower (SF) transistor of the same pixel. The readout system that is used for the temperature sensors and for the image pixels is based on low noise column amplifiers. Both types of in-pixel temperature sensors (IPTS) have been designed implementing different techniques to improve their accuracy. The use of the IPTSs has been proved by measuring three prototypes chips. Also, a novel technique to compensate for the dark current of a CIS by using the IPTS has been proposed.

For those who cannot attend, you can follow it by using this link:
https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/84dc9775142d44db81aa38e5532c67ca1d

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Wednesday, 26 May 2021
  • 15:00-16:00

Improving electrical characteristics of graphene neural electrode

Merlin Palmar

Abstract

Neuroscientists use neural electrodes to explore the working mechanisms of the nervous system. Therefore, ideal electrodes should have a small size and the ability to record and stimulate at a single cell resolution with low noise. Materials used for fabrication should be flexible and stable for a long period in the biological media. However, conventional recording and stimulation techniques do not have sufficient spatiotemporal resolution for neuroscience research. Combining electrical and optical modalities into one device helps overcome the resolution limits and record more detailed information. For this application, transparent conductive materials are needed.

Graphene is a potential solution due to its advantageous combination of properties, such as high conductivity, transparency, and flexibility. However, important characteristics of recording and stimulation electrodes, such as the impedance and charge injection capacity of graphene electrodes, do not reach the levels of conventional materials. The electrical characteristics of graphene could be improved further with surface modification, chemical doping, or stacking. Each method has been shown to improve the conductivity of graphene, although some affect the transparency of the layer.

In this work, three methods were used to improve the electrical characteristics of multilayer graphene neural electrode without losing transparency or flexibility. These methods include growing a thicker layer of graphene, adding metal nanoparticles to the surface of the electrode, and nitric acid doping of graphene. For that purpose, graphene electrodes were fabricated on a silicon wafer. The electrical characteristics of these electrodes were assessed with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry and four point probe measurements. Furthermore, the optical transmittance was measured. The improvement methods were then tested on these electrodes, and the performance was evaluated.

Adding metal nanoparticles to the surface of the electrode showed the most promising results. With gold nanoparticles, the impedance at 1 kHz was lowered 82%, and charge storage capacity increased 529%. However, at the same time, 30% of the optical transmittance was lost. With lower nanoparticle density, 6% of transmittance was lost, and 7% of impedance gained. Nitric acid doping did not improve the impedance, but the charge storage capacity was increased up to 66%. Thicker layers of graphene displayed a lower sheet resistance. However, impedance or charge storage capacity were not improved.

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Ph.D. Thesis Defense of Sining Pan

  • Monday, 12 April 2021
  • 12:00-13:30

Resistor-based temperature sensors in CMOS technology

Sining Pan

Time: Monday, 12 April 2021, 12:00-12:15 (layman’s talk), 12:30-13:30 (defense)

Abstract: This thesis describes the principle and design of an emerging type of CMOS temperature sensors based on the temperature dependency of on-chip resistors. Compared to traditional BJT-based designs, resistor-based sensors have higher energy-efficiency, better scalability, and can operate under a wider supply range. Nine design examples are shown in this thesis to demonstrate how resistor-based sensors can be optimized for accuracy, energy-efficiency, or other application-driven specifications. Among all the records the designs achieved, the energy-efficiency improvement is the most impressive: 65× better than state-of-the-art before this research, or only 6× away from the theoretical value.

Please feel welcome to join the live stream: http://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/be505395bbf24debb7cf8fd61454a5261d

Thesis: https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:28108302-2d9b-4560-a806-8ba6d381812e

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ME colloquium

  • Thursday, 25 February 2021
  • 15:30-16:30
  • NL TEAMS

MEMS-flavored organs-on-chip

Massimo Mastrangeli

The current drug development process selects candidate drugs for human testing through several pre-clinical stages making use of only approximate models of human physiology. Such models include static engineered cell cultures and non-human animals, and do not recapitulate the (patho)physiology of human organs or tissues well enough to always ensure reliable translation of results to humans. This makes the process increasingly expensive and time-consuming. A novel technology stemming from the convergence of tissue engineering and microfluidics may hold the key to bridge the translational gap, and even allow personalized drug testing. Such technology, able to reproduce realistic in vivo-like dynamic and stimulative microenvironments for tissues in vitro, goes under the name of "organs-on-chip".

In this talk I will introduce the biotechnological convergence at the root of organs-on-chip before outlining research tracks under development at ECTM in two main sub-topics: innovative microelectromechanical organs-on-chip able to stimulate and sense tissue activity, and their embedding within advanced platforms for pre-clinical research. I will conclude with remarks on the role of open technology platforms for the broader establishment and acceptance of organs-on-chip technology in research and drug development.

If you want to join, please send an email to: secr-me-ewi@tudelft.nl

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Medical Delta Café

  • Thursday, 14 January 2021
  • 16:00-17:00
  • Online via Teams

Medical Delta Café 'Zorg naar huis, en dan….? Van monitoren tot behandelen'

Wouter Serdijn, Frank Willem Jansen (Medical Delta), Gisela Terwindt (LUMC), Ries Biggelaar van den (ErasmusMC)

In het online Medical Delta Café 'Zorg naar huis, en dan….? Van monitoren tot behandelen' belichten prof. dr. Gisela Terwindt (LUMC) en drs. Ries van den Biggelaar (Erasmus MC) deze kwesties, waarna deelnemers worden uitgenodigd mee te discussiëren en kennis uit te wisselen in een paneldiscussie met onder andere Medical Delta hoogleraar prof. dr. ir. Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft).

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PhD thesis defence

  • Monday, 4 January 2021
  • 14:30-16:00
  • Online

Out-of-band Interference Immunity of Negative-Feedback Amplifiers

Emil Totev

Out-of-band interference is caused by the non-linear behaviour of the components in amplifier circuits, as detailed in Chapter 1. To address that, it is necessary to develop amplifiers with a low IP2 figure, i.e., apply linearisation.

Chapter 2 gives an overview of the existing linearisation techniques and other methods to reduce the effect of non-linear behaviour. A mathematical analysis of a generic negative-feedback amplifier is conducted in Chapter 3 using the Volterra series. As this method often involves complex, cumbersome calculations, a simplified approach is introduced in Chapter 4. Using both the classical and the simplified non-linear analysis tools, a number of new design methods for out-of-band interference immunity enhancement are developed in Chapter 5. These make use of frequency-dependent local feedback, pole position manipulation and non-linear local-feedback compensation. Finally, a design example of non-linear local-feedback compensation in a negative-feedback amplifier is presented in Chapter 6.

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PhD Thesis Defence

  • Monday, 21 December 2020
  • 14:30-16:00

Integrated Circuits for Miniature 3-D Ultrasound Probes: Solutions for the Interconnection Bottleneck

Zhao Chen

14:30-15:00 (layman’s talk), 15:00-16:00 (defence)

Please feel welcome to join the live stream

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Nico de Jong

Abstract: This thesis describes low-power application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs to mitigate the constraint of cable count in miniature 3-D TEE probes. Receive cable-count reduction techniques including subarray beamforming and digital time-division multiplexing (TDM) have been explored and the effectiveness of these techniques has been demonstrated by experimental prototypes. Digital TDM is a reliable technique to reduce cable count, but it requires an in-probe datalink for high-speed data communication. A quantitative study on the impact of the datalink performance on B-mode ultrasound image quality has been introduced in this thesis for data communication in future digitized ultrasound probes. Finally, a high-voltage transmitter prototype has been presented for effective cable-count reduction in transmission while achieving good power efficiency. The application of these techniques is not limited to only the design of TEE probes and can be easily extended to the design of other miniature 3-D ultrasound probes, for instance intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) probes and IVUS probes, which are facing similar interconnect challenges with an increased number of transducer elements to enhance imaging quality.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Wednesday, 9 December 2020
  • 15:00-15:30

Cardiac mapping on ex vivo perfused porcine slaughterhouse hearts

Jorik Hans Amesz

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 30 November 2020
  • 12:00-13:00
  • Online

Polyimide encapsulation for implantable medical devices

Sevda Malek Kani

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 30 November 2020
  • 15:30-17:15
  • Online

Ultrasound Energy Transfer using Charged CMUTs

Youri Westhoek

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 30 November 2020
  • 13:45-15:30
  • Online

Towards cMUT for Neurostimulation

Eric Bert Dijkema

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Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Thursday, 29 October 2020
  • 15:30-16:30
  • Online

Artificial Retina: A Future Cellular-Resolution Brain-Machine Interface

Dante Muratore

A healthy retina transduces incoming visual stimuli into patterns of neural activity, which are then transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. Degenerative diseases, like macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, destroy the ability of the retina to transduce light, causing profound blindness. An artificial retina is a device that replaces the function of retinal circuitry lost to disease. Present-day devices can elicit visual percepts in patients, providing a proof of concept. However, the patterns of neural activity they produce are far from natural, and the visual sensations experienced by patients are coarse and of limited use to patients.

A main hurdle is that there are many types of cells in the retina. For example, some cells respond to increases of light intensity, while other cells respond to decreases of light intensity. In order to reproduce a meaningful neural code, it is crucial to respect the specificity and selectivity of these cells. Because cells of different types are intermixed in the circuitry of the retina, cell type specific activation of this kind requires that a future artificial retina be able to stimulate at single cell resolution, over a significant area in the central retina.

To achieve this goal, we are designing an epi-retinal interface that operates in two modes: calibration and runtime. During calibration, the interface learns which cells and which cell types are available for stimulation, by recording neural activity from the retina. During runtime, the interface stimulates the available cells to best approximate the desired scene. I will present a system architecture we are developing that can accomplish the overall performance goals, and the implications of this architecture for brain-machine interfaces.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 27 August 2020
  • 10:30-13:00

Design and development of integrated displacement sensors for engineered heart tissue platforms

Mahdieh Shojaei Baghini

Under the current circumstances, the public defence will be held online. You can tune in at the following link:
https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/91898588409?pwd=NmFydjVHZUxIV2lVZXBTTzZHOTFodz09
Meeting ID: 918 9858 8409 Password: 1P0dZu

SSCS WYE Webinar

  • Friday, 7 -- Friday, 7 August 2020
  • 17:00-18:00

To Academia, or to Industry, That is the Question.

Kofi Makinwa, Shin-Lien Lu

Abstract:

You are about to finish graduate school or perhaps a young or seasoned professional, contemplating a career transition. Which is better - a career in academia or industry? What are the pros and cons of one versus the other? How can you start exploring and build up your career accordingly? In this webinar, we will interview Dr. Linus Lu, a professor-turned-industry veteran, and Prof. Kofi Makinwa, an industry veteran-turned-professor, who will share their insights and perspectives from their personal journeys in both academia and industry careers. They will also address what triggered their transitions, how they staged their transitions, and offer their crystal ball projections on present and future career prospects in the solid-state-circuits profession.

REGISTER TODAY!

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Microelectronics / Medical-NeuroDelta Colloquium

  • Thursday, 30 January 2020
  • 15:30-17:00
  • Lecture hall D@ta

Bioelectronics Medicine

Vasiliki Giagka (TU Delft/Fraunhofer IZM), Daniel Schobben (Founder, Chief Operating Officer, Salvia Bioelectronics)

Abstract Vasiliki Giagka

If the Medicine of the future is Bioelectronic, how does the pill of the future look like? – and what does it take to make it?

In a world where medicine is becoming more personalised the promise of Bioelectronic Medicine is that tiny implants will deliver energy in the form of electrical impulses, replacing pharmaceuticals, their conventional chemical counterparts. But how can we develop such tiny smart and autonomous implants that (need to) seamlessly interact with the tissue and live in the body for decades? How can we protect all the components in such an implant while still maintaining the small form factor and essential flexibility? How can we design electronics such that they remain better protected in such a harsh environment? How can we ensure autonomy under the above restrictions? Eventually, how can we make our medicine more precise, i.e. increase the specificity at which we interact with the tissue? And if we achieve all these, how will the pill of the future look like?

Abstract Daniel Schrobben

Salvia Bioelectronics, working on a novel interface and neurostimulation concept for chronic migraine treatment.

Since several years deep trench isolation (DTI) is used as a Chronic migraine – i.e. 15+ headache-days each month –affects 1.4% of the population, mostly 25-50 y/o women. Pharmacological treatments are available, but these have limited effectiveness and are associated with severe side effects (o.a. dizziness, nausea, weight gain). Many people are refractory to medication; they do not respond or cannot tolerate them.

Salvia develops a unique bioelectronic foil that is placed seamlessly below the skin to stimulate proven neural targets for the treatment of chronic headache. This patent-pending neurostimulation concept is designed for optimal safety and effectiveness and opens the market for this already-validated and long-awaited headache treatment.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 13 December 2019
  • 10:00-11:00
  • Snijderzaal, LB 01.010

Flexible Graphene-Based Passive and Active Spinal Cord Implants

Andrada Velea

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PhD Thesis Defence

  • Tuesday, 19 November 2019
  • 14:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Capacitively-Coupled Bridge Readout Circuits

Hui Jiang

This Ph.D. dissertation describes the design and realization of energy efficient readout integrated circuits (ROICs), that have an input referred noise density < 5 nV/√Hz and a linearity of < 30 ppm, as required by Wheatstone bridge sensors used in precision mechatronic systems. Novel techniques were developed, at both the system-level and circuit-level, to improve the ROIC’s energy-efficiency, while preserving its stability and precision. Two prototypes are presented, each with best-in-class energy efficiency, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

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PhD Thesis Defence

  • Monday, 11 November 2019
  • 12:00-14:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

High-Speed Interfaces for Capacitive Displacement Sensor

Sha Xia

This thesis describes the theory, design, and implementation of high-speed capacitive displacement sensor interface circuits. The intended application is to readout the capacitive displacement sensor used in a servo loop, where the measurement time needs to be low to ensure loop stability. The work employs baseline-capacitance cancellation technique to reach a high energy-efficiency and high conversion speed.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 31 October 2019
  • 15:00-15:30
  • Building 34, Lecture Hall E (Robert Hooke)

A Dynamic Zoom ADC for Audio Applications

Efraïm Eland

Audio ADCs used in high-fidelity portable audio and IoT are not only required to have high linearity and dynamic range (DR) but are also expected to be very energy efficient and occupy minimum silicon area. Zoom-ADCs combine a coarse asynchronous SAR with a fine Delta-Sigma Modulator (∆ΣM) to satisfy these requirements. Existing zoom ADC architectures are limited in terms of SQNR due to the need for the fine ADC to have some over-ranging. That, together with the leakage of the SAR ADC’s quantization noise, “fuzz,” into the audio band, puts a lower limit on the sampling frequency.
This thesis describes the design of a zoom-ADC for an audio bandwidth of 20kHz. Using a 4-level quantizer, instead of a conventional 1b quantizer, mitigates the adverse effects of over-ranging, making it possible to keep a very low sampling frequency. On top of that, it makes use of a simple, low power analog “fuzz” cancellation scheme to prevent the SAR quantization noise from leaking into the audio band.
The chip has been prototyped in a standard 160nm CMOS technology and consumes 339μW with 107.7dB DR and 105dB SNDR. Compared to state-of-the-art ADCs with a similar bandwidth, this work achieves a 2x lower OSR (fs = 2.5MHz), significantly improving the energy efficiency and achieving a Schreier FoM of 185.4dB.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 31 October 2019
  • 12:30-13:00
  • Building 34, Lecture Hall E (Robert Hooke)

Rail-to-rail input and output amplifier for ADC front-end applications.

Shubham Khandelwal

This work presents a unity-gain stable operational amplifier for an ADC front-end application. The op-amp focuses on delivering high linearity with low noise and offset while driving a switched capacitor load. To accomplish this the op-amp employs Current Spillover, Chopping and Gain-Boosting techniques. The op-amp achieves THD of -108 dB at 10kHz, offset of 2.7 µV and input noise density of 19.3 nV/√Hz while consuming 504 µW; resulting in an NEF of 12.28. The op-amp is fabricated in 0.16 µm CMOS technology and occupies 0.1 mm2 area.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Wednesday, 23 October 2019
  • 15:00-15:30
  • LB 01.010 Snijderszaal

A PLL-based eddy current displacement sensor for button applications

Matheus Ferreira Pimenta

This thesis presents an eddy current sensor (ECS) for button readout applications. The interface embeds the coil sensor in a digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) and uses a highly digital phase locked loop (PLL) to convert the displacement information into a digital output.
The sensor achieves more than 12bit effective resolution, which translates into an equivalent displacement resolution in excess of 10nm RMS. The interface consumes less than 235µA from a 1.8V supply, resulting in a very power efficient architecture.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 26 September 2019
  • 10:00
  • EKL Colloquium room

Design and Fabrication of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators for Organ-on-Chip Platforms

Chuqian Zhang

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 20 September 2019
  • 10:00
  • EKL Colloquium room

MEMS ultrasound for active implantable devices

Marta Saccher

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 19 September 2019
  • 15:30-16:00
  • Lecture Hall Technology in PULSE, building 33a

An ASIC with Bipolar High-Voltage Transmit Switching for a Single-Cable Intra-Vascular Ultrasound Probe

Rishabh Nagarkar

An ASIC is presented for intra-vascular ultrasound imaging. Despite being connected via a single coaxial cable, it is able to pass arbitrary high-voltage bipolar signals to the transducers for acoustic imaging. The thesis talks about the need to reduce the cable count to one and reviews the existing work in literature. It builds upon an existing single-cable design and focuses on the transmit part to make it compatible with a large number of ultrasound imaging modes by allowing it to pass high-frequency signals up to 20MHz and bipolar signal voltages up to +/-25V. The chip is phantom powered and thus its power supply and signals are transmitted on the same cable. The transmit switch designed for this ASIC is powered by and controlled by an on-chip low-voltage supply and circuitry. The prototype ASIC has been designed in TSMC 180nm HV BCD Gen2 technology. This single-cable design has 16 elements for transmit and 64 elements in the receive mode and has been evaluated using simulations.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 30 August 2019
  • 10:00-10:30
  • Lecture Hall 10 in PULSE, building 33a

A low-noise amplifier for ultrasound imaging with continuous time-gain compensation

Qiyou Jiang

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for ultrasound imaging with built-in continuous time-gain compensation (TGC), which compensates for the time-dependent attenuation of the received echo signal and thus significantly reduces its dynamic range (DR).

The proposed design combines the LNA and TGC functions in a single variable-gain current-to-current amplifier. Compared to conventional ultrasound front-ends, which implement the TGC function after an LNA that needs to handle the full DR of the echo signal, this approach can highly reduce the power consumption and the size. Compared to earlier programmable gain LNAs with discrete gain steps, the continuous gain control avoids switching transients that may lead to imaging artefacts.

The TGC function is realized by a novel feedback network consisting of a double differential pair that feeds a fraction of the output current back to the input. This fraction can be changed continuously using a control voltage that is applied to the gates of the differential pairs, to realize a gain range from -20 dB to +20 dB. To achieve an approximately constant closed-loop bandwidth in the presence of the changing feedback factor, a loop amplifier has been implemented whose gain is changed along with the feedback factor by dynamically changing its bias currents. This loop amplifier employs a current-reuse architecture to achieve high power-efficiency. In addition, a variable bias current source has been designed to appropriately bias the TGC feedback network. By employing a similar double differential pair topology as in the feedback network, this current source provides the required low noise at the highest gain setting and high current at the lowest gain setting within the available headroom.

The LNA with built-in TGC function has been realized in 180nm CMOS technology. It has been optimized to interface with a 7.5 MHz capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT). Simulation results show that it achieves a 3dB bandwidth higher than 40 MHz across the full gain range. At the highest gain setting, its input current noise is 0.96 pA/rt-Hz at 7.5 MHz. This leads to an input dynamic range of 93 dB, which is compressed into an output dynamic range of 53 dB by means of the 40 dB variable gain. The amplifier consumes 10.8 mW from a 1.8V supply, and occupies an estimated 320 x 320 um2 die area.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 22 August 2019
  • 16:00-17:30
  • EKL Colloquium room

High density integrated capacitors for smart catheters and implants

Jeroen Naaborg

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 22 August 2019
  • 09:00-11:00
  • EKL Colloquium room

Noninvasive Hemodynamic Monitoring: Left Ventricular Pressure-Volume Loop Reconstruction

Aoibhinn Larkin Reddington

PRORISC and SAFE 2019

  • Thursday, 4 -- Friday, 5 July 2019
  • Aula Conference Centre of TUDelft

PRORISC and SAFE 2019

PRORISC is an annual conference on Integrated Circuit (IC) design and SAFE is an annual conference on Microsystems, Materials, Technology and RF-devices. Both conferences are organized together within the three technical Dutch universities Twente, Delft and Eindhoven. The conference is organized by PhD students and is intended for PhD candidates to expand their network and share their research ideas, which provides a unique opportunity for future collaborations. Each year, one of the technical universities will be responsible for the organization of the two conferences. In 2019 the PRORISC will be held at at the campus of Delft University of Technology.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Tuesday, 25 June 2019
  • 11:00-12:00
  • EWI-Lecture hall Chip

Quantum Computer on a Chip

Bogdan Staszewski
University College Dublin

Quantum computing is a new paradigm that exploits fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, to tackle problems in mathematics, chemistry and material science that are well beyond the reach of supercomputers. Despite the intensive worldwide race to build a useful quantum computer, it is projected to take decades before reaching the state of useful quantum supremacy. The main challenge is that qubits operate at the atomic level, thus are extremely fragile, and difficult to control and read out. The current state-of-art implements a few dozen magnetic-spin based qubits in a highly specialized technology and cools them down to a few tens of millikelvin. The high cost of cryogenic cooling prevents its widespread use. A companion classical electronic controller, needed to control and read out the qubits, is mostly realized with room-temperature laboratory instrumentation. This makes it bulky and nearly impossible to scale up to the thousands or millions of qubits needed for practical quantum algorithms.

As part of our startup company, we propose a new quantum computer paradigm that exploits the wonderful scaling achievements of mainstream integrated circuits (IC) technology which underpins personal computers and mobile phones. Just like with a small IC chip, where a single nanometer-sized CMOS transistor can be reliably replicated millions of times to build a digital processor, we propose a new structure of a qubit realized as a CMOS-compatible charge-based quantum dot that can be reliably replicated thousands of times to construct a quantum processor. Combined with an on-chip CMOS controller, it will realize a useful quantum computer which can operate at a much higher temperature of 4 kelvin.

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Inauguration Earl McCune and Cicero Vaucher

  • Friday, 17 -- Friday, 17 May 2019
  • 15:00-18:00
  • TU Delft Auditorium

Who's talking, who's listening?

Earl McCune, Cicero Vaucher
TU Delft

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Micro electronics colloquium

  • Thursday, 28 March 2019
  • 15:30-17:00
  • EEMCS, Restaurantzaal

High performance data converters; Rethink analog IC design

Nan Sun, Muhammed Bolatkale

Nan Sun: Rethink Analog IC Design

I will present several unconventional data conversion architectures. First, I will talk about how we can make use of noise, which is usually deemed as an undesirable thing, to estimate the conversion residue and increase the SNR of a SAR ADC. It is an interesting example of stochastic resonance, in which the presence of noise can lead to not SNR degradation but SNR enhancement. Second, I will talk about how we can perform data conversion below the Nyquist rate by exploiting the sparsity of the input signal. I will show two example compressive sensing ADCs and how the effective ADC conversion rate can be reduced by 4 times but without losing information. Third, I will show how we can prevent the seemingly inevitable kT/C noise in a Nyquist-rate pipelined ADC by using a continuous-time SAR based 1st-stage. This can substantially reduce the requirement on the ADC input capacitance, greatly reducing the ADC driver power and reference buffer power

Biography of Nan Sun

Nan Sun is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He received the B.S. from Tsinghua in 2006 and Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 2010. Dr. Sun received the NSF Career Award in 2013. He serves on the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference and the IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuit Conference. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – I: Regular Papers, and a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. He also serves as IEEE Circuits-and-Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer from 2019 to 2020.

Muhammed Bolatkale: High Performance Data Converters

A next generation automotive radio receiver, an all-digital Class-D amplifier, and an advanced Bluetooth transceiver have one thing in common: they rely on high-performance data converter architectures to enable best in class performance. This talk will give an overview of GHz-sampling data converters, especially focusing on wideband delta-sigma and hybrid data converter architectures. We will touch upon state-of-the-art systems and circuit level designs fabricated in advance CMOS nodes.

Bio Muhammed Bolatkale

Muhammed Bolatkale is Senior Principle Scientist at NXP Semiconductors and part-time Associate Professor in the Electronics Instrumentation Laboratory at Delft University of Technology. He received his B. Sc. (high honors) degree from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2004 and the M. Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in 2007 and 2013. Since 2007, Dr. Bolatkale has worked for NXP Semiconductors, specializing in wideband Delta-Sigma ADCs for wireless communications and automotive applications. Dr. Bolatkale received the ISSCC 2016 and 2011 Jan Van Vessem Award for Outstanding European Paper and the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 2016 and 2011 Best Paper Award.

Additional information ...

Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Friday, 8 March 2019
  • 16:00-17:15
  • CiTG 0.98 (lecture room opposite PSOR)

Introducing new CAS professors

Andrew Webb, Borbála Hunyadi

Andrew Webb:

MRI is one of the most important clinical imaging modalities for diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Recent trends have been towards ever higher magnetic fields and operating frequencies. This talk outlines some of the technical challenges faced by very high field and conversely very low field MRI, and the roles that electromagnetics and signal processing can play in improving image quality

Borbala Hunyadi

Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) record a mixture of ongoing neural processes, physiological and non-physiological noise. The pattern of interest is often hidden within this noisy mixture. This talk gives an overview of signal processing and machine learning techniques to address this issue by capturing the spatiotemporal structure in the (multimodal) data. Special attention is given to tensor-based blind source separation techniques, with applications in epilepsy research.

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Wednesday, 24 October 2018
  • 12:30-14:00
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Free standing interconnects for stretchable electronics

Shivani Joshi

Additional information ...

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 23 October 2018
  • 15:00-16:00
  • EKL Colloquiumroom

Fabrication and reliability study of parylene-ceramic based flexible interconnects for implantable devices

Diane Wu

Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Tuesday, 25 September 2018
  • 03:00-05:00
  • EWI, Snijderszaal

Tenure track colloquium

Sten Vollebregt, Massimo Mastrangeli, Daniele Cavallo

Wideband phased arrays for future wireless communication terminals, Daniele Cavallo (TS group)

Wireless data traffic will grow exponentially in the next years, due to the proliferation of user terminals and bandwidth-greedy applications. To address this demand, the next generations of mobile communication (5G and beyond) will have to shift the operation to higher frequencies, especially to millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum (30-300 GHz), that can provide extremely high-speed data links. To enable mm-wave wireless communication, mobile terminals such as smartphones will need phased arrays antennas, able to radiate or receive greater power in specific directions that can be dynamically steered electronically. However, to cover the different 5G mm-wave bands simultaneously (28, 39, 60 GHz, …) and to achieve total angular coverage, too many of such antennas should be on the same device: the main bottleneck is the insufficient space available to place all antenna modules. Therefore, I propose to investigate novel phased array antenna solutions with very large angular coverage and ultra-wide frequency bandwidth, to massively reduce the overall space occupation of handset antennas and overcome the current limitations of mobile terminal antenna development.

Towards smart organs-on-chip, Massimo Mastrangeli (ECTM Group)

Organs-on-chip are microfluidic systems that enable dynamic tissue co-cultures under physiologically realistic conditions. OOCs are helping innovating the drug screening process and gaining new fundamental insights in human physiology. In this talk, after a summary of my past research journey, I will describe how the ECTM group at TU Delft is envisioning the use microfabrication and materials science to embed real-time sensing and actuation in innovative and scalable OOC platforms.

Emerging electronic materials: from lab to fab, Sten Vollebregt (ECTM group)

Due to their nm-size features and often unique physical properties nanomaterials, like nanotubes and 2D materials, can potentially outperform classical materials or even provide functionality which cannot be obtained otherwise. Because of this, these nanomaterials hold many promises for the next generation of devices for sensing & communication and health & wellbeing.

Unfortunately, many promising applications of nanomaterials never reach sufficient maturity to be implemented in actual products. This is mostly because the interest in the academic community reduces once the initial properties have been demonstrated, while the risk for industrialization is still too high for most companies to start their own R&D activities. My goal is to bridge these two worlds by investigating the integration of novel nanomaterials in semiconductor technology and demonstrating the scalability of novel sensing devices. In this talk, I will give examples on how carbon nanotubes, graphene and other emerging nanomaterials can be used in the next generation of sensing devices.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 4 September 2018
  • 11:00-11:30
  • EKL Colloquiumroom

Integration of a local drug delivery system in a micro-fabricated Brain-on-Chip device

Hanieh Mastyani

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 4 September 2018
  • 11:30-12:00
  • EKL Colloquiumroom

Flexible parylene-platinum based electrodes and interconnects

Arshaad Ishrat Kanhai

TU Delft Health College

  • Thursday, 5 July 2018
  • 19:30-22:30
  • Aula Congress Center, TU Delft

From Nano-Structures in Health to Health in Space

Andre Kuipers, Amir Zadpoor, Wouter Serdijn, Julia Cramer
Delft University of Technology

Additional information ...

Conferences

  • Thursday, 7 -- Friday, 8 June 2018
  • 10:30-17:30
  • University of Twente, Eschede

PRORISC 2018 Conference

Annual conference on Integrated Circuit (IC) design, organized within the three technical Dutch universities Twente, Delft and Eindhoven

Additional information ...

Conferences

  • Thursday, 7 -- Friday, 8 June 2018
  • 10:30-17:30

SAFE 2018 Conference

Annual conference on Micro-systems, Materials, Technology and RF-devices, organized within the three technical Dutch universities of Twente, Delft and Eindhoven.

Additional information ...

TU Delft International Festival of Technology

  • Thursday, 7 June 2018
  • 18:30-21:00

Xperience Day - EEMCS evening program

John Schmitz, Ionica Smeets, Wouter Serdijn, Geurt Jongbloed, Cynthia Liem, Vinay Balaji, Alberto Gancedo

Additional information ...

Active Implantable Biomedical Microsystems Course

  • Tuesday, 24 April 2018
  • 13:45-15:30
  • DW IZ 1 (140 1verd)

Active Implantable Biomedical Microsystems Course

Vasiliki Giagka, Virgilio Valente, Christos Strydis, Wouter Serdijn
Delft University of Technology and Erasmus Medical Center

Course on the understanding, design and future developments of active implantable biomedical microsystems, such as cochlear implants, cardiac pacemakers, spinal cord implants, neurostimulators and bioelectronic medicine.

Additional information ...

Smart Sensor Systems 2018

  • Monday, 16 -- Friday, 20 April 2018
  • 09:00-12:30
  • TU DELFT

Smart Sensor Systems 2018

This course addresses the design and development of smart sensor systems. After a general overview, various key aspects of sensor systems are discussed: measurement and calibration techniques, the design of precision sensor interfaces, analog-to-digital conversion techniques, and sensing principles for the measurement of magnetic fields, temperature, capacitance, acceleration and rotation. The state-of-the-art smart sensor systems covered by the course include smart magnetic-field sensors, smart temperature sensors, physical chemosensors, multi-electrode capacitive sensors, implantable smart sensors, DNA microarrays, smart inertial sensors, smart optical microsystems and CMOS image sensors. A systematic approach towards the design of smart sensor systems is presented. The lectures are augmented by case studies and hands-on demonstrations.

Additional information ...

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Tuesday, 3 April 2018
  • 12:00-14:00
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Front-End ASICs for 3-D Ultrasound: From Beamforming to Digitization

Chao Chen

Program:
12:00 - 12:15 Introductory presentation
12:30 - 13:30 Public defense
13:45 - 14:00 Diploma ceremony
Address: Senaatszaal of the Aula Congress Center

SUMMARY
This thesis describes the analysis, design and evaluation of front-end application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for 3-D medical ultrasound imaging, with the focus on the receive electronics. They are specifically designed for next-generation miniature 3-D ultrasound devices, such as transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) probes. These probes, equipped with 2-D array transducers and thus the capability of volumetric visualization, are crucial for both accurate diagnosis and therapy guidance of cardiovascular diseases. However, their stringent size constraints, as well as the limited power budget, increase the difficulty in integrating in-probe electronics. The mismatch between the increasing number of transducer elements and the limited cable count that can be accommodated, also makes it challenging to acquire data from these probes. Front-end ASICs that are optimized in both system architecture and circuit-level implementation are proposed in this thesis to tackle these problems.
The techniques described in this thesis have been applied in several prototype realizations, including one LNA test chip, one PVDF readout IC, two analog beamforming ASICs and one ASIC with on-chip digitization and datalinks. All prototypes have been evaluated both electrically and acoustically. The LNA test chip achieved a noise-efficiency factor (NEF) that is 2.5 × better than the state-of-the-art. One of the analog beamforming ASIC achieved a 0.27 mW/element power efficiency with a compact layout matched to a 150 µm element pitch. This is the highest power-efficiency and smallest pitch to date, in comparison with state-of-the-art ultrasound front-end ASICs. The ASIC with integrated beamforming ADC consumed only 0.91 mW/element within the same element area. A comparison with previous digitization solutions for 3-D ultrasound shows that this work achieved a 10 × improvement in power-efficiency, as well as a 3.3 × improvement in integration density.

The dissertation can be found in the TU Delft repository: http://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:a5002bb0-4701-4e33-aef6-3c78d0c9fd70

Additional information ...

Dutch Ultra Low Power Conference

  • Wednesday, 7 March 2018
  • 10:00-17:00
  • Novio Tech Campus, Nijmegen, NL

The medicine of the future you’ll need to take only once, and it’s a bioelectronic one

Wouter Serdijn

The Dutch Ultra Low Power Conference brings together Belgian and Dutch professionals and companies involved in the development and application of devices with ultra low power technologies. It targets engineers, designers and technical managers in the advanced field of energy harvesting and ultra low power and energy-efficient designs. The keynote will be given by Wouter Serdijn, professor of bioelectronics at Delft University of Technology.

Additional information ...

MSc CE Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 23 February 2018
  • 16:00-16:40
  • EWI HB 17.150

Energy Efficient Feature Extraction for Single-Lead ECG Classification Based On Spiking Neural Networks

Eralp Kolagasioglu

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the developed world. Preventing these deaths, require long term monitoring and manual inspection of ECG signals, which is a very time consuming process. Consequently, a wearable system that can automatically categorize beats is essential.

Neuromorphic machines have been introduced relatively recently in the science community. The aim of these machines is to emulate the brain. Their low power design makes them an optimal choice for a low power wearable ECG classifier.

As features are crucial in any machine learning system, this thesis aims at proposing an energy efficient feature extraction algorithm for ECG arrhythmia classification using neuromorphic machines. The feature extraction algorithm proposed in this thesis consists of the merger of a low power feature detection and a feature selection algorithm. Also, different network configurations have been investigated to achieve classification using an LSM architecture. The resulting system can accurately cluster seven beat types, has an overall classification rate of 95.5%, and consumes an estimate of 803.62 nW.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 29 January 2018
  • 13:00-15:00
  • EKL colloquiumroom

Fabrication and Characterization of PEDOT coated microelectrode array for Organ on Chip Application

Affan Kaysa Waafi

InScience Festival Movie (Nijmegen)

  • Saturday, 11 November 2017
  • 21:30
  • Nijmegen

Cyborgs Among Us

Wouter Serdijn

Imagine having a sixth sense! These are the first cyborgs that transcend the boundaries of human possibility and spark the debate about the technological evolution of mankind. Cyborgs Among Us offers insight into how technology can become part of us and the social and ethical implications associated with it. 

Professor Wouter Serdijn from Delft University of Technology explains technology and the human body from the perspective of bioelectronics.

Additional information ...

MSc BME thesis presentation

  • Thursday, 9 November 2017
  • 14:00-15:00
  • t.b.d.

SOMNUS: An Ultra-Wideband Radar-Based Approach for Neonatal Sleep State Classification

Maria Silos Viu

Abstract:
br> In the recent years, there has been an increasing awareness of the critical role of sleep for brain development of young infants. During the early neonatal stages of human development, the basic activity of the brain is to sleep. Prolonged sleep is required in infants for further development of the nervous system. Sleep also plays an important role as body temperature regulation and energy saving system. Neonatal sleep is divided into two main different sleep stages: Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM). As the infant develops, sleep stages vary in maturity, length and distribution, thus the importance of the quantification of these stages that could eventually lead to new biomarkers of neonatal brain development.

Nowadays, the gold standard in sleep monitoring are Polysomnography (PSG) studies, in which vital signs, as well as EEG and muscle activity, are recorded during a whole-night study and subsequently, sleep stages are classified by an expert. However, the high obtrusiveness of the multiple electrodes involved in the PSG and its high associated cost make it impossible to be used as routinely monitor system. SOMNUS project was divided into two main goals: (1) accurately measure respiration signals from patients using an ultra-wideband radar module, and (2) detect differences in respiration between REM and NREM phases in order to unobtrusively and automatically score sleep states of infants without the need for an electrode attached to the patient. The system was developed using a training dataset of 22 patients ranging from 3 months to 14 years old age. Previous studies had used radar technology for vital signs detection during the last years. This work provides a new data analysis algorithm to suppress motion artifacts movements from radar signals and increase the robustness of respiration monitoring. Furthermore, it represents the first time such technology is used to monitor sleep in young patients, reaching an overall sleep classification accuracy of 80%.

The BELCA music festival!

  • Friday, 27 October 2017
  • 19:00-23:00
  • EWI /Pub

Annual Music Festival of the Sections Bioelectronics and Electronics

The BELCA Band, Doe Normaal, Rotterdam Centraal

Annual music festival with two invited bands and of course the BELCA band. Highly recommended. Free entrance.

MSc BME thesis presentation

  • Wednesday, 25 October 2017
  • 10:00-11:00
  • Van der Poel-zaal (EWI LB01.220)

System Building Blocks for Mathematical Operators Using Stochastic Resonance -- Application in an Action Potential Detection System

Insani Abdi Bangsa

MSc thesis presentation on Stochastic Resonance Systems for Biomedical Applications

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

  • Monday, 23 October 2017
  • 14:00-16:00
  • EWI HB17.150
Insani Abdi Bangsa, Kostas Konsolakis

Bioelectronics Colloquium

  • Monday, 16 October 2017
  • 11:00-12:00
  • EWI HB17.150

On the Relationship between Nyquist Rate and Healthcare: Silicon Systems to Close the Sub-Sampling Gap in Health Screening and Monitoring

Amin Arbabian, PhD (Stanford University)

Abstract
Advances in healthcare technologies have mainly focused on therapeutics, interventional procedures, and “late-stage” diagnostics. These steps have undergone significant improvements, leading to higher survival rates and enhancements in quality of life. Nevertheless, current trends are unsustainable due to the inadequate outcomes on specific critical diseases and skyrocketing national healthcare costs. An important example is cancer, where mortality rates have not seen major improvements, even with the tremendous technological advances in diagnostic imaging tools over the last four decades.

In this talk I will outline our efforts in better marrying technology and healthcare with new systems that 1) enable continuous “Nyquist” imaging and screening to enable preventive/predictive care, and 2) introduce smart implants for precision monitoring and closed-loop therapies. Preventive screening through continuous monitoring has the potential to fundamentally revamp our understanding of disease as well as targeted therapy. Today, the human body is monitored infrequently, perhaps on an annual basis and with a low “resolution”. This is in contrast with advanced electronic systems (many of which our community designs and ships), which are frequently monitored and calibrated. I will summarize a few example projects that aim to address these issues, including portable, semiconductor-based, “Tricorder” imaging systems, ultrasound-powered implantable devices that can measure, detect, and act upon local physiological changes through closed-loop neuromodulation or “electroceuticals”, and finally our new investigation of a noninvasive methods of neuromodulation based on ultrasonic excitation.

Biography
Amin Arbabian received his Ph.D. degree in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2011 and in 2012 joined Stanford University, as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in mm-wave and high-frequency circuits and systems, imaging technologies, and ultra-low power sensors and implantable devices. Prof. Arbabian currently serves on the steering committee of RFIC, the technical program committees of RFIC and ESSCIRC, and as associate editor of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSC-L) and the IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (J-ERM). He is the recipient or co-recipient of the 2016 Stanford University Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2015 NSF CAREER award, 2014 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) including the Director’s Fellowship in 2016, 2013 Hellman faculty scholarship, and best paper awards from several conferences including ISSCC (2010), VLSI Circuits (2014), RFIC symposium (2008 and 2011), ICUWB (2013), PIERS (2015), and the MTT-S BioWireless symposium (2016).

Additional information ...

EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON CIRCUIT THEORY AND DESIGN, CATANIA, SEPTEMBER 4-6, 2017

  • Monday, 4 -- Wednesday, 6 September 2017
  • 09:00-21:00
  • Catania, Italy

Getting Better with Electroceuticals – electronic medicine to the rescue

Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn will give a keynote at the 23th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, Sept. 4-6, 2017, in Catania, Italy

Additional information ...

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 21 August 2017
  • 13:00-14:00
  • EKL Colloquiumroom

High Density Flexible Interconnect for Minimally Invasive Medical Instruments

Michel van der Kaay

Microelectronics IoT Pitch

  • Wednesday, 5 July 2017
  • 15:00-18:00
  • New Sports Cafe - TU Deft

and Summer Drink

All ME-MSc’s and ME-employees are cordially invited to make a 2-minute pitch for an interesting and unexpected IoT application.

The format is free like the level of seriousness and feasibility are but there is a meaningful purpose as the event is meant to inspire the definition of technology integrating projects in the field of IoT. The pitches will be ‘graded’ by measuring the intensity of the applause. The pitch wil be followed by the yearly Summer Drink of the Microelectronics Department.

PhD thesis defence Yao Liu

  • Tuesday, 13 June 2017
  • 14:30-16:00
  • Aula, Senaatszaal

Analysis and Design of Low-Power Receivers: Exploiting Non-50-Ohm Antenna Impedance and Phase-Only Quantization

Yao Liu

Summary

Reducing the power consumption of low-power short-range receivers is of critical importance for biomedical and Internet-of-Things applications. Two interesting degrees of freedom (or properties) that have not been fully exploited in the pursuit of low power consumption are the antenna impedance and the phase-only modulation property of FSK/PSK signals. This dissertation explores the possibility of reducing the power consumption of the receiver by utilizing these two degrees of freedom.

The feasibility of using a non-50-ohm antenna impedance in an active receiver front-end is first studied. A general antenna-electronics interface analysis is carried out, suggesting that power transfer is not the only design objective in the interface, but that the impedances of antenna and load need to be optimized for either voltage or current, depending on which is more favorable to measure with the electronics. This principle has been applied to a co-design example of an inductive antenna impedance and a low-noise amplifier (LNA). A passive RF gain can be achieved by using the proposed principle, and hence the noise figure (NF) can be reduced without sacrificing power consumption. The concept of a non-50-ohm antenna impedance is also exploited in the context of passive front-ends (PFEs). An inductive antenna impedance proves beneficial for increasing the passive voltage gain of an antenna-LNA interface. The study of the PFE aims for the same voltage-boosting effect by incorporating the inductive antenna impedance in the PFE. An analysis reveals that the inductive antenna impedance introduces two extra degrees of freedom to increase the downconverted voltage of the front-end for a given antenna available power. In order to well maintain the passive gain offered by the inductive antenna impedance together with its resonant load, the passive mixer should present a high-quality-factor capacitive input. This is achieved by incorporating an intermediate inductance in the passive network. The proposed front-end and a baseband LNA have been implemented to verify the voltage-boosting effect. The implementation has a passive gain of 11.6 dB, which is close to the state-of-the-art of 12 dB.

A promising concept which can fully utilize the phase-only modulation property of FSK/PSK signals is that of phase-domain analog-to-digital converters (PhADCs). This dissertation also deals with the analysis and design of PhADCs. First of all, analytical methods are proposed to comprehensively compare the PhADC and an (in-phase and quadrature) IQ ADC. Phase signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) expressions of the two ADC types are formulated analytically to facilitate a quantitative comparison of the ADCs. In comparison with the IQ ADC, the PhADC, due to its embedded demodulation attribute, is a more compact quantization and demodulation solution when interference accommodation is not required. Moreover, considering a flash ADC as an example of the low resolution (3-4 bit) IQ ADC, the PhADC has a lower theoretical energy limit than the flash IQ ADC for a given phase effective number of bits (ENOB) due to the immunity to magnitude variations and the phase-only quantization, thereby showing the great room for energy efficiency improvement that the PhADC has. Second, having discussed the interesting attributes of the PhADC, an IQ-assisted conversion algorithm and a corresponding circuit topology to improve the energy efficiency of the PhADC are proposed. Thanks to the successive approximation (SAR)-like algorithm and charge-domain operation, the prototype achieves a FoM of 1.2 pJ/step, which is better than the state-of-the-art of 8.3 pJ/step. Finally, the explicit relationship between the input amplitude SNR and the output phase SNR of the PhADC has been formulated. This relationship facilitates the system analysis of a receiver using a PhADC.

Using the proposed PFE and charge-redistribution PhADC, a receiver system is constructed. Based on the measured specifications of the PFE and the PhADC, the simulated performance of a PGA and a 2nd-order filter and the analysis outcomes of the PhADC presented in Chapter 4, the benefit of using the PhADC for a receiver system is quantified. For the proposed PFE and the IEEE 802.15.6 application, two ADCs (for I and Q paths) with a SNR of 30.4 dB are needed if an amplitude ADC is used, while a PhADC with a phase SNR of 24.5 dB (when the input amplitude is -11.9 dBm) is sufficient if a PhADC is used. For an antenna input level of -83.6 dBm (which corresponds to the minimum input level that has been specified for the PhADC), the presented receiver system demonstrates a sufficient overall SNR for the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, thereby paving the way to fully-integrated low-power receivers for the standard.

Additional information ...

MSc thesis presentation

  • Monday, 22 May 2017
  • 14:00-14:45
  • t.b.d.

A Low-Complexity CMOS Receiver for UWB siqnals

Ernesto Huaman

Ernesto's MSc thesis presentation on localization using UWB and its implementation in CMOS

NeuroControl Symposium 2017

  • Tuesday, 16 May 2017
  • 09:00-09:30
  • Zeist the Netherlands

Electroceuticals -- bio-electronic medicine as an alternative to drugs

Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn will give a keynote at the 2017 symposium of IMDI NeuroControl on the future of medicine, which will be electronic

Additional information ...

Professoren in de Arena

  • Tuesday, 28 March 2017
  • 20:00-21:30
  • Theater de Veste

Professoren in de Arena: De bionische mens, van protheses naar upgrades

Wouter Serdijn, Just Herder, Harrie Weinans, Project March

Op 28 maart gaan drie hoogleraren, waaronder Wouter Serdijn, met elkaar in debat over 'de bionische mens'. Wat is er mogelijk en hoe ver kun, wil en mag je gaan? In drie korte minicolleges praten de heren u bij en worden ze vervolgens stevig aan de tand gevoeld door cabaretier, columnist en TU-docent Jasper van Kuijk. In de discussie die daarop volgt, wordt het publiek van harte uitgenodigd mee te doen.

De sprekers van deze avond zijn:

Just Herder - Professor of Interactive Mechanisms and Mechatronics

Harrie Weinans - Professor of Tissue Biomechanics and Implants

Wouter Serdijn - Professor in Bio-Electronics

Project March

Deze editie van ‘Professoren in de Theaterarena’ wordt georganiseerd i.s.m. het ‘Explore your Brain’ evenement van de TU Delft Library in het kader van het 175 jarig bestaan van de TU Delft.

Over Professoren in de Arena

In nauwe samenwerking met de TU Delft en de universiteiten van Leiden en Rotterdam zetten wij in een theatrale setting steeds drie spraakmakende hoogleraren op het podium rondom een actueel thema. Deze onderwerpen worden van verschillende kanten belicht, vanuit de harde wetenschap en/of maatschappelijke en ethische hoek. In een magazine-achtig format met korte colleges, stand-up colums wordt u bijgepraat en doet u mee in de discussie.

Locatie: Theatercafé, Theater de Veste

Additional information ...

Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Wednesday, 15 March 2017
  • 15:00-17:00
  • EWI: Snijderszaal

Microelectronics Department Colloquium

Daniele Cavallo, Vasiliki Giagka, Fabio Sebastiano, Rob Remis

On Wednesday March 15 the next Microelectronics colloquium wil take place, including four lectures by staff members.

Please register online by completing the form.

  • Vasso Giagka
    Flexible bioelectronic medicines
    Abstract: Bioelectronic medicines are the next generation of neuromodulation devices: small active three-dimensional neural interfaces able to modulate nerve activity by targeting a specific neural region. They aim to treat a number of conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, in a tailored (per individual) and reversible fashion, avoiding the side effects of conventional drug-based interventions (pharmaceuticals). They achieve so by recording signals from the respective nerves, extracting information and using it as feedback to electrically stimulate the neural region in a closed-loop manner.

    Current technologies for active implants have not yet managed to achieve the miniaturisation and integration levels required for the development of bioelectronic medicines. For such breakthrough devices, novel concepts need to be explored, developed, and tested.

    In this talk I will present my current activities as well as my vision on realizing the first flexible three-dimensional graphene active implant, for safe chronic neural stimulation and recording from the peripheral nerves.

  • Fabio Sebastiano
    Cryo-CMOS for Quantum Computing: does it work?
    Quantum computing holds the promise to change our lives by efficiently solving computing problems that are intractable today, such as simulation of quantum systems for synthesis of materials and drugs. A quantum computer comprises both a quantum processor and a classical electronic controller to operate and read out the quantum devices. The quantum processor must be cooled at cryogenic temperature in order to show quantum behavior, thus making it unfeasible to wire thousands of signals from the cryogenic quantum devices to a room-temperature controller.

    While this issue can be solved by placing also the electronic controller at cryogen¬ic temperature, which electronic technology is the best choice for its implementation? This talk will address the challenges of building such electronic controller, and answer whether a standard CMOS technology can be employed for the required analog and digital circuits operating at 4 K and below.

  • Daniele Cavallo
    Advanced Antenna Arrays for Modern Radar and Communication Systems
    Abstract: Several of today’s radar and wireless communication applications are shifting their operation to higher frequency to fulfil more demanding requirements on resolution, compactness and data rates. For this reason, there is a growing need to develop low-cost integrated circuit transceivers working at millimeter and sub-millimeter waves.

    However, on-chip antennas are currently characterized by very poor radiation efficiency and extremely narrow bandwidth. My approach of combining the concepts of connected arrays with artificial dielectrics will solve the inefficiency problem and enable high-efficiency on-chip antenna designs.

    Similar concepts can be also realized at microwave frequencies in printed circuit board, allowing for low-cost phased array antennas with state-of-the-art performance in terms of scan range, bandwidth and polarization purity.

  • Rob Remis
    Imaging with Waves
    We present an overview of our current wave field imaging and inversion research. Effective inversion strategies for important applications in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), nano-optics, and subsurface monitoring will be discussed. In particular, dielectric shimming (shaping of the radio frequency field in MRI) as well as inversion algorithms that determine the dielectric properties of various tissue types based on measured MRI data will be considered, and state-of-the-art model-order reduction techniques for large-scale wave propagation problems will be discussed as well.

Monthly meeting of the Bioelectronics Section

  • Tuesday, 14 March 2017
  • 12:00-14:00
  • t.b.d.

Bioelectronics Group meeting

Farnaz Nassirinia, Ronaldo Martins da Ponte, Dieuwert Mul

e talks / discussion items in bioelectronics

MS3 seminar

  • Wednesday, 15 February 2017
  • 16:00-17:00
  • EEMCS, Snijderszaal

Capabilities and Research Activities at the University of Oklahoma Advanced Radar Research Center

Prof. Nathan A. Goodman
The Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma

The Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma consists of a vibrant group of faculty and students from both engineering and meteorology, focused on solving challenging radar problems and preparing the next generation of students. Through the collaborative nature instilled in its members, the ARRC has proven effective at developing synergy between science and engineering in the field of radar. The ARRC resides in state-of-art Radar Innovations Laboratory, a one-of-a-kind and unrivalled facility for radar research, development, and education. This 35,000-sqft facility includes microwave labs, advanced fabrication capability, and two anechoic chambers.

Bio Prof. Goodman: Nathan A. Goodman received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1995, 1997, and 2002, respectively. From 1996 to 1998, he was an RF systems engineer for Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX., and from 2002 to 2011, he was a faculty member in the ECE Department of the University of Arizona, Tucson. He is now a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Research for the Advanced Radar Research Center at the University of Oklahoma, Norman.

Bioelectronics meeting

  • Tuesday, 14 February 2017
  • 18:00-20:00
  • t.b.d

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Alberto, Gustavo

MS3 seminar

  • Monday, 13 February 2017
  • 15:30-18:00
  • EWI Snijderszaal

MS3 Master Event

Come to learn about our group and current Master Thesis Projects...

Additional information ...

  • Friday, 3 February 2017
  • 14:00-15:00
  • NH Leeuwenhorst Hotel, Noordwijkerhout

BIOELEKTRONICA – BETER WORDEN DOOR MIDDEL VAN ELEKTRICITEIT EN ELEKTRONICA

Wouter Serdijn

De meeste scholieren die hun vwo aan het afronden zijn en erover denken om hun opleiding aan een technische universiteit te vervolgen, verwachten dat uitvindingen die zij daar zullen doen een positieve invloed zullen hebben op belangrijke maatschappelijke zaken. Denk aan duurzame energie, schoon water voor iedereen, een veiliger samenleving, kwaliteit van leven, het doorgronden van het brein,en het vervaardigen van betere medicijnen. En hun verwachtingen zijn terecht. Ingenieurs dragen in belangrijke mate bij aan het oplossen van deze vraagstukken die ons allemaal aangaan.

In deze presentatie laat ik diverse aspecten van de wiskunde en natuurkunde zien die nodig zijn om tot een verbetering van bio-elektronische medicijnen te komen, waarmee ik de relevantie en noodzaak van deze wetenschappelijke talen aantoon. Op een voor een groot publiek behapbare manier komen de volgende onderwerpen aan bod: modellering, chips-technologie, halfgeleiderfysica, exponentiele functie, simplificatie, integraalrekenen, differentiaalvergelijking, fasoren, complexe getallen, schematuur, prototypering, co-design, metingen en interpretatie. De presentatie geeft niet alleen inzicht in het wiskundig en natuurkundig gereedschap, maar ook in de toekomstige ontwikkeling van zogenaamde ‘elektroceutica’, die een grote impact zullen hebben op de toekomstige behandeling van neuronale aandoeningen zoals epilepsie, oorsuizen, verslavingen, migraine en chronische pijn.

Additional information ...

Microelectronics Introduction Colloquium

  • Monday, 12 December 2016
  • Theatre - Culture Building 38, Mekelweg 10

Introduction 3 new Tenure Trackers

Masoud Babaie, Morteza Alavi, Faruk Uysal

On December 12 we organize the next Microelectronics Colloquium to introduce three new Assistant Professors (Tenure Trackers) of the Microelectronics department. They are happy to present a lecture about their research.

The colloquium start at 15.00 hrs. there will be a drink afterwards in the foyer.
Location: Theatre of Culture Builing (38) Mekelweg 10.
Please register online if you want to attend, latest December 5.

  • Masoud Babaie: Pushing The Limits of CMOS Circuits for Emerging Technologies
    Within the next few years, quantum processors, Fifth Generation (5G) cellular systems and the wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) are expected to see significant deployment to realize more integration between the physical and digital worlds, promising enormous computation power, high data rate communications and enabling more objects to be remotely sensed and controlled.

    This talk will address some of the main challenges in the design and implementation of IoT devices, mm-wave 5G transceivers, and cryogenic CMOS controller for quantum computers. An overview of my past and ongoing research activities will be also presented, with emphasis on novel solutions to improve power efficiency and spectral purity of RF/mm-wave transceivers.

  • Morteza Alavi: Universal Transmitters for 5G
    Today, our daily activities are intertwined with the Internet. The ever-growing demand to swiftly get access to the data-cloud systems leads to huge data traffic. In order to seamlessly transmit and receive these gigantic data, _ 40 GB, agile radio-frequency (RF) transceivers are inevitable.

    These radios must be capable of supporting the current and future communication standards such as 5th generation of wireless mobile communications. The ultimate goal is that they can be implemented as universal radios whose modes of operation can be defined by their clients. To address these demands, RF transmitters are currently reinvented and are directed towards digital-intensive architecture. In this short presentation, we will briefly describe the strengths,possibilities, and challenges that exist for these advanced transmitters. First and foremost, the concept of RF-DAC based transmitters will be introduced. Next, the talk will review various RF-DAC based transmitters that have already been implemented at ELCA. Eventually, the presentation will concisely unveil the future directions of the research of these software-defined transmitters at ELCA.

  • Faruk Uysal: Distributed Radar Networks: Beyond a single radar
    The number of operational radar is rapidly increasing due to the growing demand of the remote sensing. Software defined radio and emerging single-chip radar technology make use of radars in every aspect of life such as autonomous driving, safety and security applications. With the increase of active transmitters, spectrum management and coexistence started to become a concern for some radar systems. In this talk, the previous applications of waveform, frequency agility will be reviewed to bring multi-functionality to the modern radar system. Finally, we will discuss the future research for distributed radar networks and how to fuse data from various radars to acquire different aspects of a target to be viewed simultaneously.

MSc BME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 12 December 2016
  • 11:00-12:00
  • EWI LB01.010, Snijderszaal

Wireless Power Transfer and Optogenetic Stimulation of Freely Moving Rodents

Farnaz Nassiri Nia

Animal studies are commonly used to test the feasibility and effectiveness of promising novel neuroscience research ideas. One such new technique is optogenetic stimulation, which refers to stimulation of the brain by means of light. Current optogenetic stimulation methods use tethered setups and, typically, the animal-under-study is put into a fixed position. This introduces stress, an obvious reduction in animal welfare, and may thus influence the experimental results. Hence, an untethered setup is highly desirable. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose a complete wireless optogenetic stimulation setup, which allows for full freedom of movement for multiple rodents-under-study in a 40x40x20 cm environment.

This thesis includes a thorough design space exploration and the subsequent development of: an inductive wireless link, a wireless receiver module that resides on the animal, and novel micro-LED array implants.

PhD Thesis Defence Andre Mansano

  • Tuesday, 22 November 2016
  • 12:00-14:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting and Low Power Data Transmission for Asynchronous Wireless Sensor Nodes

Andre Luis Mansano

SUMMARY

Since the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be the new technology to drive the semiconductor industry, significant research efforts have been made to develop new circuit and system techniques for autonomous/very low-power operation of wireless sensor nodes. Very low-power consumption of sensors is key to increase battery lifetime or allow for battery-less (autonomous) operation of sensors, which contributes to reducing or preventing the high maintenance costs of battery supplied sensors and reduce the amount of discarded batteries.

This thesis, entitled Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting and Low Power Data Transmission for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Nodes, presents very low-power consumption circuit and system techniques combined with energy harvesting that allow the creation of autonomous wireless sensor nodes. This work focuses on three main challenges:
1) how to improve energy harvesting efficiency,
2) how to minimize power consumption of data transmission and
3) howto combine low-power techniques and energy harvesting in a system.
These challenges are addressed in this thesis with on-PCB and integrated circuit (IC) solutions.

The efficiency of radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting is improved by proposing a new topology of a charge-pump rectifier. The proposed topology uses a voltage boosting network to compensate for the voltage drop in the transistors. The new topology is presented as well as a non-linear circuit analytical analysis. Simulation results are compared to the analytical analysis and measurement results of the circuit that has been fabricated in a 0.18 um CMOS technology and operates at 13.53 MHz. Although the efficiency of RF energy harvesting is improved using the above technique, at the same time, low power techniques in data transmission should be developed to save energy. Pulse width modulation and impulse transmission techniques to minimize power consumption have been developed and are presented in this thesis.

The developed pulse modulation circuitry has been fabricated in 0.18 um CMOS technology as part of a System on Chip (SoC). The new impulse transmitter topology for low-voltage low-power operation has been fabricated on PCB with micro-wave discrete components. Theoretical analysis, simulations and measurements results are shown to prove the impulse transmitter concept.

The circuits developed are integrated in a SoC with energy harvesting to prove the concept of autonomous wireless sensor nodes. Two sensor nodes have been designed and measured: one for autonomous temperature monitoring and the second for autonomous ECG monitoring. Both designs operate from wireless power without the use of batteries.

Finally, the work developed in this thesis is analyzed and future research possibilities are discussed.

Additional information ...

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 21 November 2016
  • 14:00-15:00
  • EWI HB17.150

A 0.6V Low Noise Current Generator for Bio-Impedance Measurements in 40nm CMOS

Yao Li

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 25 October 2016
  • 14:00-15:00
  • Lipkenszaal, EWI LB01.150

Structured electronic design of high-pass ΣΔ converters and its application to cardiac signal acquisition

Samprajani Rout

Abstract:

With the bandwidth of the ECG signal extending from sub-Hz to 200 Hz, a major challenge in developing the analog front-end responsible for digitizing the analog signal for an ECG readout system lies in implementing the large time-constants on chip due to area constraints. While techniques to obtain very large time constants exist, they are heavily limited by both linearity and accuracy, which clearly dictates the need for alternative structures.

In this thesis, a ΣΔ converter is used for its noise-shaping property to digitize the acquired signal. A structured electronic design methodology based on state-space forms is proposed to develop high-pass (HP) ΣΔ converter topologies. As opposed to conventional low-pass or band-pass ΣΔ, a generalized signal transfer function which includes the high-pass characteristic is used. The proposed HP ΣΔ topologies satisfy the signal transfer function, which is high-pass characteristic in this application and the noise transfer function, which is a 2-nd order noise shaping in this case. Furthermore, the noise contribution of each of the integrators is evaluated and the topologies are compared in terms of their total noise contribution. Finally, one of the structures is implemented in 0.18 um technology as a final step of verification.

Additional information ...

MSc BME Thesis Presentation

  • Tuesday, 25 October 2016
  • 10:00-11:00
  • Lipkenszaal, EWI LB01.150

aEEG analog front-end IC for neonatal brain development monitoring

Maciej Kostalkowski

Abstract:

Every year number of prematurely born infants grows. Most underdeveloped organ after birth is brain. Therefore its monitoring is very important, especially as it can provide indications about health state in a future, both short and long term. Non invasive method of brain monitoring is aEEG recording.

Although aEEG is already well known and accepted in neonatology, it is still not used to monitor every patient. Problem is high price of a device starting from 30000 euro. In a result, hospital is not able to provide proper monitoring for each and every patient. For this reason, main task of this thesis is to propose cheaper version of a system.

In order to propose cheap design, minimal requirements have to be specified. Two tests were performed. First one was to identify interferences disturbing aEEG recording. Only registered interference was 50Hz spike coming from the mains. Noise floor peak to peak amplitude was measured on 1μV level, while magnitude of 50Hz spike was on the level of 9μV for devices turned off and 25μV for devices turned on.
Second performed test was resolution test. Test showed that in order to keep the number of bits low, amplification of the signal is required. Amplification by factor of 1000 allowed to reduced this value to 7bits.

Proposed system consists of amplifying stage realising 60dB gain with high pass cut off filtration and ADC. Amplifying stage is realised by amplifier providing 35dB gain with filtration below 2Hz and second amplifier realising 25dB gain. ADC is implemented by continuous time second order Sigma Delta Modulator. Proposed system was designed in CMOS 0.18μ and h18a6am technology. Tests of full system showed SNR no lower than 51dB, power consumption of 217.5μV. Input stage has CMRR of 113dB and input impedance above 2.25GΩ for the bandwidth 2-15Hz. System reliability was checked with corner analysis and wide range of temperatures. Results showed small variations of SNR.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Monday, 24 October 2016
  • 14:00-15:00
  • Van der Poel-zaal, EWI LB01.220

A 0.6V, 1uW, 0.95µVrms low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier for ECG/BioZ in 40nm CMOS

Qiuyang Lin

Abstract:

This thesis presents a low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier designed to be implemented in 40 nm CMOS technology and operating from a 0.6 V supply, intended for use in electrocardiogram (ECG) and bio-impedance (BioZ) signal acquisition. This instrumentation amplifier has one ECG channel, one BioZ channel and allows both signals to be measured at the same time.

The core of the system is an AC-coupled instrumentation amplifier. A DC servo-loop is applied to handle large differential electrode offset (>300 mV) and a positive feedback loop is used to boost the input impedance (>100 MOhms). This instrumentation amplifier achieves low noise (<1 uVrms over a bandwidth of 150 Hz), large CMRR (>100 dB) while only consuming 1 uW of power. The instrumentation amplifier has a noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 2.4 and it occupies only 0.1 mm^2 chip area.

Additional information ...

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 16 September 2016
  • 10:00
  • Snijderszaal, EEMCS, LB01.010

t.b.d. (multi-channel backscattering for reading out the ECoG of freely moving rodents)

Ide Swager

Additional information ...

PhD thesis defence Mark Stoopman

  • Friday, 9 September 2016
  • 12:00-15:00
  • Delft, Aula, Senaatszaal

Circuit Design for Highly Sensitive RF-Powered Wireless Sensor Nodes

Mark Stoopman

Emerging applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), smart buildings and warehouse inventory management are important driving forces behind the development of Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSNs). With future advancements made in the semiconductor industry, these WSNs are expected to become smaller, cheaper, more reliable and with improved functionality. The prospect of energy scavenged WSNs is to eliminate the burden of battery replacement, thereby significantly saving on maintenance costs in large WSN networks.

This dissertation focuses on the research, design and implementation of various circuit blocks and the system integration of energy scavenged WSNs used in the aforementioned applications. To select a suitable energy harvester, four different energy harvesting approaches are discussed: vibrational, thermal, photovoltaic and RF. Of these harvesters, it shows that RF-powered WSNs have the distinct advantage over WSNs using other forms of energy harvesting that they are low cost and can operate wirelessly in a large variety of applications, even in cold, dark and static environments. Moreover, additional advantages such as utilizing a dedicated RF source for both energy harvesting as well as the generation of a reference frequency greatly reduces the complexity and power consumption of the WSN.

A co-design methodology is presented to optimize the interface between the RF energy harvester and the WSN electronics for maximum sensitivity, efficiency and output power. First, general co-design principles for antennaelectronics interfaces in the receiving mode are introduced, which includes optimum reception of wireless information and wireless power. It is shown that the choice of interface impedance plays a crucial role during the optimization procedure and that, besides maximum power transfer, the interface needs to be optimized for either voltage or current, depending on which is more favorable for the electronics. Design examples are given to, for example, improve noise figure, efficiency and sensitivity without increasing power consumption.

Based on the presented co-design principles, a CMOS rectifier and a compact loop antenna are presented for a highly sensitive RF energy harvester. A 5-stage cross-connected differential rectifier with a complementary MOS diode in the last rectifying stage is designed that significantly improves the harvester?s ability to store and hold energy over a longer period of time than a conventional MOS diode. A low resistive and high-Q interface is utilized to obtain good sensitivity. To compensate variations at the interface, a control loop with a 7-bit binary-weighted capacitor bank is proposed that provides self-calibration. The chip is implemented in TSMC 90 nm CMOS technology, includes ESD protection and is directly mounted on the backside of the custom designed antenna. Measurements in an anechoic chamber at 868 MHz demonstrate an end-to-end maximum PCE of 40% and a sensitivity of -27 dBm to generate 1V across a capacitive load. In an office corridor, 1V could be generated from a 1.78 W RF source at 27 meter distance.

A high efficiency tuned switching Power Amplifier (PA) is proposed for < 0 dBm output power. It is shown theoretically that an optimum duty cycle exists for maximum drain efficiency for a given switch and effective load resistance. To set this duty cycle, an on-chip duty cycle calibration loop is proposed that fixes the duty cycle over PVT variations. A 2.4 GHz PA prototype is implemented in 40nm CMOS technology and supports On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation with pulse shaping capabilities. A global efficiency of 40% is achieved when delivering -5 dBm to a 50 W load, which compares favorably to the state-of-the-art. Due to the introduced memory in the duty cycle calibration loop, the rise and fall times are kept below 3.3 ns, making high data rate OOK modulation feasible.

The findings in this thesis have been used for the system integration of a compact RF-powered DLL-based 2.4 GHz CMOS transmitter. The received dedicated RF signal is used for both RF energy harvesting as well as frequency synthesis. An RF energy harvester with a nanowatt power management circuit harvests and subsequently monitors the energy in the storage capacitor to determine when enough energy is accumulated to initiate wireless data transmission. Once the voltage regulator and bias current circuit blocks are enabled, the incoming RF carrier is extracted and used as frequency reference. The frequency synthesizer consits of a frequency divider, Delay Locked Loop (DLL) and XOR-based frequency multiplier and thus allows for a compact integrated solution. All building blocks have been implemented in 40 nm CMOS technology and occupy only 0.16 mm2. Experimental results show a maximum rectifier efficiency of 36.83% at -11.47 dBm. In harvesting mode, the complete power management circuit only consumes 120 nA. For a 1 mF storage capacitor and -18.4 dBm minimum available power at 915 MHz RF input, the TX outputs a continuous 2.44 GHz RF signal of -2.57 dBm for 128 ms with 36.5% PA drain efficiency and 23.9% global efficiency. The complete TX consumes 1.46 mW during OOK modulation at 0.5 Mbps.

Additional information ...

Free Webinar on Bioelectronics and Biosensors

  • Wednesday, 7 September 2016
  • 11:00-12:00
  • Online (11:00 hrs CET)

IMPACT and Electroceuticals: getting better with electricity

Stewart Smith, Wouter Serdijn
Oxford Global

Complimentary Registration - Bioelectronics and Biosensors Webinar

Do not miss out on the complimentary Bioelectronics and Biosensors Webinar, to be held on Wednesday 7th September 2016, 10a.m. GMT.

Can't attend the live webinar? Still register and the recording will be sent to you


This webinar is for biosensors and bioelectronics professionals and those interested in hearing about the current and future challenges in this exciting and rapidly moving industry. It is for those who are based in UK and Europe who would like to hear views from leading experts about their current research.


Featuring the first presentation on Anti-Cancer Therapy ? a key application for biosensor devices by Dr. Stewart Smith, from the University of Edinburgh and the second presentation on The Current Research and Applications in Bioelectronic Medicine by Professor Wouter A. Serdijn, from Delft University of Technology, the one hour webinar gives an insightful introduction to the topics covered at the forthcoming Bioelectronics and Biosensors Congress, 17-18 November 2016, London.


Click here to register for the webinar today, for free


Do you have any colleagues who may be interested in hearing this webinar? 

Forward to a colleague >>


Download the 2016 Bioelectronics & Biosensors Congress agenda today here


Why register to attend the Bioelectronics & Biosensors Congress?


Our event features over 35 international world-class speakers who will share their research into diagnostic sensors, nerve stimulation, implantable devices and ?electroceuticals?.

 

  • Getting Better With Electroceuticals: Electronic Medicine To The Rescue. Wouter Serdijn, Professor, Delft University of Technology
  • Discovery And  Application Of Biomarkers For Biosensor Use In Infectious Disease Diagnosis. Nigel Silman, Strategic R&D Lead, Public Health England
  • Bioelectronics Technology Research At GSK. Brad Holinski, ‎Bioelectronics R&D Manager, GSK
  • Gammacore, A Hand-Held Bioelectric Device For The Treatment Of Chronic Headache Conditions. Iain Strickland, Director, Electrocore

This is a free webinar open to all, so why not sign up and benefit from the expertise of our speakers?

Contact Angela Fernandez for further information

a.fernandez@oxfordglobal.co.uk | +(44)01865 248455

Terms & Conditions: This webinar is exclusively for Bioelectronics & Biosensors professionals. If you are unsure whether you should attend please contact marketing@oxfordglobal.co.uk for clarification.
In very rare circumstances the event may be cancelled, postponed or the time changed. We will endeavour to contact you by telephone and email, it is therefore imperative that you provide the correct information. Failure to provide all the details we require on the registration form may result in your registration being cancelled.
By registering for this event you agree to be added to Oxford Global?s mailing list. If you would prefer not to receive emails about Oxfrod Global?s events and free webinars you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Please note the personal information provided by you will be held on a database by Oxfrod Global in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. Data may be shared with the selected partners for the event that you are attending however we will not disclose personal data that you have provided to any other third party and the information you supply to us will only be used by Oxfrod Global and selected partners to contact you regarding training/events or our other services.

Biomedical Electronics Seminar

  • Wednesday, 7 September 2016
  • 12:00-14:00
  • t.b.d..

The monthly meeting of the Bioelectronics Section

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 26 August 2016
  • 14:00
  • t.b.d.

In-vivo multicell inferior olivary recordings: alternative design methods for creating cheap and flexible electrode structures

Joost Kerpels

In order to allow neuroscientists to do in-vivo recordings on hard to reach brain tissue, such as the Inferior Olivary Complex, specially designed electrodes are required. Although a variety of electrodes are commercially available, they are usually expensive and it is hard to rapid prototype new designs.

This thesis describes the design process of three electrode array designs, each improved based on the findings of the previous one. The first design was made using a FlexPCB production technique, on which gold spots were added to create conducting measuring sites. The second design combined this technique with commercial microwire electrodes. The third design used 3d-print technology combined with microwire electrodes to create an electrode array.

All designs were tested in in vivo measurements on mice. Although successful measurements were done, the robustness and reproducibility needs to improve in order for this technique to really be applicable in a laboratory environment. Furthermore, the peripherals need to be improved in order to minimize the system to create a wearable system and perform recordings on wake animals.

Additional information ...

MSc ME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 26 August 2016
  • 10:00
  • t.b.d.

A compact multi-electrode system to measure in vivo electrical activity in the olivocerebellar system -- measuring sub-threshold oscillations and action potentials spatially and over time

Matthijs Weskin

Additional information ...

BELCA Festival

  • Friday, 1 July 2016
  • 18:30-23:00
  • Pub, EEMCS, Mekelweg 4, Delft

The bi-annual music festival of the Bioelectronics and Electronics groups in the /Pub at EEMCS

BELCA festival

What started out as a way to showcase the talent of faculty members in 2010 has grown into a small-scale festival, a collaboration between the Bioelectronics Department and the Electronics Research Lab. This year it's on July 1 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science's cellar /Pub. "We'll have two external bands plus the BELCA band. As well as music there'll be dancing and shows too," said Farnaz Nassiri Nia, festival coordinator. "People are already rehearsing for their performances including some pop, jazz and Rammstein. We've tried to make it multicultural so there'll be Indian, Italian, Brazilian and Iranian songs." It's not ticketed, so you can just turn up and enjoy the show. The /Pub can accommodate 300 people.

Additional information ...

Beta Balie Debat: van Patient tot Cyborg

  • Wednesday, 11 May 2016
  • 20:00
  • Prinsenkwartier, St. Agathaplein 4, Delft

Studium Generale organiseert een Beta Balie Debat met Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn is Hoogleraar Bioelektronica en werkt aan miniatuur-elektronische apparaatjes die in ons lichaam communiceren met hart-, spier-, zenuw- en hersen-weefsel. Deze electroceutica zijn de elektronische tegenhangers van farmaceutica en kunnen ingezet worden om de doven te laten horen, de blinden te laten zien, de lammen te laten lopen en een groot aantal hersen-aandoeningen, zoals tinnitus (oorsuizen), epilepsie en Parkinson succesvol te behandelen. En belangrijk voordeel is dat je dit elektronische medicijn maar ??n maal hoeft in te nemen. Maar hoe veilig is dit allemaal? En kunnen we behalve zieken beter maken ook niet-zieken nog beter maken? En wat is dan ?beter?? Zou jij een bionisch oor willen hebben, of een bionisch oog? Zou jij direct met je partner willen kunnen communiceren zonder tussenkomst van spraak, gebaren, oren en ogen? Zou jij een cyborg willen worden?

Wouter wil met jullie in debat over de mogelijkheden van electroceutica, gebruik en misbruik en of er ergens een grens t.a.v. de mate van supermenselijkheid te trekken valt.

Additional information ...

Bioelectronics group meeting

  • Wednesday, 13 April 2016
  • 12:30-14:30
  • t.b.d.

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Joost Kerpels; Ernesto Gonzales Huaman

Inaugural Speech dr.ir. Wouter A. Serdijn

  • Wednesday, 30 March 2016
  • 15:00
  • Grand Auditorium, Aula, Delft University

Beter worden met elektroceutica -- elektronische medicijnen reiken de helpende hand

Wouter Serdijn

This inaugural speech will be spoken in Dutch. However, the presentation material will be in English or with English subtitles.

The symposium that precedes the inaugural speech will be in English.

Additional information ...

Symposium: Bioelectronics meets Electrophysiology

  • Wednesday, 30 March 2016
  • 09:30-18:00
  • Aula Main Auditorium, Delft University of Technology, Delft
Johan Frijns (LUMC), Jeroen Dudink (ErasmusMC), Richard Houben (AB-Sys), Freek Hoebeek (ErasmusMC), Dirk Ridder (Otago Univ.)

On the occasion of Wouter Serdijn?s recent appointment to full professor in bioelectronics and the inaugural ceremony in which he accepts his appointment, a full-day symposium will be organized. This symposium addresses bioelectronics from a technological, a medical, a clinical, an industrial and a societal perspective. Five distinguished speakers from the Erasmus and Leiden Medical Centers, from the Dunedin School of Medicine and from Applied Biomedical Systems will address these challenging topics.

The symposium language will be English and free of charge. Registration is required, though. Please click the following link to register: Registration

Programme:

9:30 hrs: registration and coffee  
10:00 hrs: opening of the symposium by the chairman, Dr.ir. Marijn van Dongen  
10:10 hrs: Prof.dr.ir. Johan Frijns, Leiden University Medical Center, ENT Cochlear Implants: Clinical problem, technical solution and social impact
10:40 hrs: Dr. Jeroen Dudink, Erasmus Medical Center, Neonatology The future of baby brain monitoring
11:10 hrs: Ing. Richard Houben, Applied Biomedical Systems Electroanatomical Mapping of Persistent Atrial Fibrillation
11:40 hrs: coffee break  
12:10 hrs: Dr. Freek Hoebeek, Erasmus Medical Center, Neuroscience Bioelectronics allow the small brain to conquer the big brain
12:40 hrs: Prof.dr. Dirk de Ridder, Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand

Bioelectronics controls the brain by mimicking nature
13:10 hrs: lunch  
15:00 hrs: inaugural ceremony and speech of Dr.ir. Wouter Serdijn, Delft University of Technology

Beter worden met elektrceutica: elektronische medicijnen reiken de helpende hand

(Eng: Getting Better with Electroceuticals: electronic medicine to the rescue)
16:30 hrs reception+  

 

ExG taskforce

  • Friday, 11 March 2016
  • 17:00
  • HB18.320
Samprajani Rout; Ide Swager; Matthijs Weskin

Bioelectronics Paper Club

  • Wednesday, 27 January 2016
  • 13:00-13:45
  • EWI HB18.320

Bioelectronics Paper Club

Samprajani Rout

The weekly paper club of the Section Bioelectronics

Bioelectronics Colloquium

  • Tuesday, 12 January 2016
  • 12:30-15:00
  • t.b.d.
Ali Kaichouhi, Renato Borges, Yao Liu

The monthly meeting of the Bioelectronics Section

Bioelectronics/ELCA Christmas Lunch

  • Thursday, 17 December 2015
  • 12:00-14:00
  • \Pub (EWI cellar)

The annual Christmas lunch with international dishes prepared by MSc and PhD students

Paper Club

  • Wednesday, 16 December 2015
  • 13:00-13:45
  • Davidsezaal, EWI HB18.320

The weekly paper club of the Section Bioelectronics, in which we discuss a paper of special interest to the group

Vasiliki Giagka

Additional information ...

EE Lunch Lecture (in Dutch)

  • Tuesday, 15 December 2015
  • 12:30-13:30
  • EWI, Room Ampere

Beter worden met electroceutica: implanteerbare en injecteerbare elektronica reiken de helpende hand

Wouter Serdijn

De 21e eeuw zal de eeuw worden waarin we ons brein z?n geheimen zullen ontfutselen en waarin we het gebruik van elektriciteit zullen benutten om beter met onze elektro-chemische hoofdcomputer te interageren. In deze lunchlezing zal ik uitleggen hoe ?electroceutica?, de elektronische tegenhangers van farmaceutica, kunnen helpen om neurologische stoornissen beter te behandelen. Verder zal ik een technologisch perspectief schetsen voor hun toekomstige ontwikkeling door electroceutica kleiner, energiezuiniger en intelligenter te maken.

Additional information ...

Paper Club

  • Wednesday, 9 December 2015
  • 13:00-13:45
  • Davidsezaal, EWI HB18.320

The weekly paper club of the Section Bioelectronics, in which we discuss a paper of special interest to the group

Gustavo Martins

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Bioelectronics group meeting

  • Tuesday, 8 December 2015
  • 12:00-14:30
  • EWI HB17.150

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Ernesto Gonzales Huaman, Farnaz Nassiri Nia, Ali Kaichouhi

PhD thesis defence Wannaya Ngamkham

  • Monday, 7 December 2015
  • 12:00-14:30
  • Aula, Senaatszaal, Delft University of Technology

Analog Integrated Circuit and System Design for a Compact, Low-Power Cochlear Implant

Wannaya Ngamkham

Cochlear Implants (CIs) are prosthetic devices that restore hearing in profoundly deaf patients by bypassing the damaged parts of the inner ear and directly stimulating the remaining auditory nerve fibers in the cochlea with electrical pulses. This thesis describs the electronic circuit design of various modules for application in CIs in order to save area, reduce power consumption and ultimately move towards a fully implantable CI.

To enhance the perception of tonal languages (such as Thai and Chinese) and music, an effort to realize the speech processor in a CI that imitates the inner hair cells and the auditory nerve behaviour more precisely should be made. According to recent physiological experiments, the envelope and phase of speech signals are required to enhance the perceptive capability of a CI implanted patient. The design of an analog complex gammatone filter is introduced in order to extract both envelope and phase information of the incoming speech signals as well as to emulate the basilar membrane behavior. A subthreshold Gm−C circuit topology is selected in order to verify the feasibility of the complex gammatone filter at very low power operation.

Several speech encoding strategies like continuous time interleaved sampling (CIS), race-to-spike asynchronous interleaved sampling (AIS), phase-locking zero-crossing detection (PL-ZCD) and phase-locking peak-picking (PL-PP) are studied and compared in order to find a compact analog speech processor that allows for full implantation and is able to convey both time and frequency components of the incoming speech to a set of electrical pulse stimuli. A comparison of the input and reconstructed speech signals in terms of correlation factor and hardware complexity pointed out that a PL-PP strategy provides a compact solution for the CI electronic hardware design since this strategy does not require a high precision envelope detector. A subthreshold CMOS peak-instant detector to be used in a PL-PP CI processor has been designed. Circuit simulations, using AMIS 0.35 􀀀m technology, show that the proposed detector can be operated from a 1.2 V supply and consumes less than 1 􀀀W static power for detecting a 5 kHz input signal. The output signal of the detector together with the input signal amplitude (the output of the band-pass of each channel) is expected to be used as control parameters in a stimulator for cochlear apical electrodes.

To design stimulators that are implanted inside the body, there are very strict requirements on the size and power consumption. Therefore, it is important to convey as much charge as possible into the tissue while using an as low as possible supply voltage to minimize power consumption. A novel method for maximizing the charge transfer for constant current neural stimulators has been presented. This concept requires a few additional current branches to form two feedback loops to increase the output resistance of a MOS current mirror circuit that requires only one effective drain-source voltage drop. The main benefit we achieve for neural stimulation is the larger amount of charge that can be conveyed to the stimulation electrode. In other words, for the same amount of charge required, the supply voltage can be reduced. Also, a compact programmable biphasic stimulator for cochlear implants has been designed by using the the above concept and implemented in AMS 0.18 􀀀m high-voltage CMOS IC technology, using an active chip area of only 0.042 mm2. Measurement results show that a proper charge balance of the anodic and cathodic stimulation phases is achieved and a dc blocking capacitor can be omitted. The resulting reduction in the required area enables many stimulation channels on a single die.

As the work laid out in this thesis produced only stand-alone modules, future work should focus on combining all these modules together to form an analog CI processor suitable for a fully implantable cochlear implant.

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Paper Club

  • Thursday, 3 December 2015
  • 13:00-13:45
  • Davidsezaal, EWI HB18.320

The weekly paper club of the Section Bioelectronics, in which we discuss a paper of special interest to the group

Renato Borges

Paper Club

  • Thursday, 26 November 2015
  • 13:00-13:45
  • Davidsezaal, EWI HB18.320

The weekly paper club, in which we discuss one paper of special interest to the group

Wouter Serdijn

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International Symposium on Bioelectronics and Bioinformatics

  • Friday, 16 October 2015
  • 09:45-10:30
  • Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Getting better with electroceuticals: implantable and injectable electronics to the rescue

Wouter Serdijn

The 21st century will be the century in which we will unravel the intricacies of the brain and in which we will use electricity to interact with our electro-chemical mainframe better. In this talk Prof. Serdijn will explain how electroceuticals, the electronic counterparts of pharmaceuticals, can help to successfully treat neurological disorders. Further, he will sketch a technological avenue of their future development by making electroceuticals smaller, more energy efficient and more intelligent. Examples will be given for fully-implantable bionic ears and neurostimulators for the treatment of tinnitus, Tourette?s syndrome and epilepsy.

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Bioelectronics Group meeting

  • Wednesday, 7 October 2015
  • 12:00-14:00
  • t.b.d.

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Gustavo Martins, Ide Swager, Renato Borges

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Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Monday, 21 September 2015
  • 15:00-17:00
  • TU Delft - Culture - Theatre, Building 38, Mekelweg 10

Extreme Electronics

Fabio Sebastiano, Vasiliki Giagka, Daniele Cavallo

Please Register if you want to join the colloquium.
During the Microelectronics Colloquium "Extreme Electronics". Three new Assistant Professors (Tenure Tracker) of the Microelectronics Department will present a lecture in this context.



This will be a good occasion to meet the new staff members and learn about their research. There will be a drink afterwards as well.

Vasiliki Giagka - Active Implantable Microsystems
Implantable devices have been part of our lives for many decades now. The understanding of the electrical properties of the transmitted signals in our bodies have given researchers ideas on how to interface with them by using electronics. The concept of active implants refers to the miniaturisation of the electronics and their integration into microsystems suitable to live in our bodies. These devices can be employed to write signals to the body, inhibit undesired functionality for target organs, or read signals that convey the intention of our organism. This talk will focus on presenting some of the main applications and possibilities of active implants, and will discuss the challenges related to implantable microsystems, through the example of the design, fabrication and evaluation of a stimulating active electrode array for rehabilitation of walking after spinal cord injury

Daniele Cavallo - Towards the implementation of Integrated,On Chip Terahertz Systems
Terahertz (THz) sources and detectors have been developed in the last years for applications such as space observation, spectroscopy and security screening. However, until now, the components for making such THz systems have been very bulky and pricey, and thus not suitable for cost-driven commercial applications of THz technology. In the next years, my research will be focused on the development of low-cost, efficient and highly-integrated THz systems. On the one hand, the rapid scaling of CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS will eventually enable the realization of low-cost THz electronics. On the other hand, a careful co-design of the electronic circuit, the antenna and the quasi-optical system is crucial to bring real advances in this field. An overview on the ongoing research activities on integrated THz transceivers will be presented, with emphasis on novel solutions to improve the efficiency of on-chip antennas.

Fabio Sebastiano - Cryogenic CMOS for Quantum Computers
Quantum computers hold the promise to change our everyday lives in this century in the same radical way as the classical computer did in the last century, by efficiently solving problems that are intractable today, such as large number factorization and simulation of quantum systems. Quantum processors must be cooled at cryogenic temperatures well below 1 K and each of their quantum bits (qubit) must be controlled by a classical electronic interface. Since future quantum processors with practical applications will require up to thousands or millions of quantum bits (qubit), the electronic controller must operate at cryogen?ic temperatures as close as possible to the quantum processor, to avoid the unpractical requirement of thousands of cables from the cryogenic refrigerator to a room-temperature controller. This talk will address the challenges of building such a scalable silicon-based cryogenic electronic controller, focusing on to use standard CMOS technology to build complex analog and digital systems and circuits operating down to 4 K and below.

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PhD thesis defence Yongjia Li

  • Friday, 11 September 2015
  • 12:30-15:00
  • Aula, Senaatszaal, TU Delft

Level-Crossing ADCs and their Applications in Biomedical Readout Systems

Yongjia Li

Chapter 1 introduces the background of the thesis topic. The basic knowledge of level-crossing sampling is described. In a wireless sensor node, the system power consumption is usually dominated by the wireless power transmission. Reducing the data size is crucial to save system power consumption under such circumstances. Therefore, a comparison between conventional uniform sampling and level-crossing sampling is made in terms of sampling data size. For low resolution (< 7 bits) in amplitude, LC-ADCs generate fewer samples than uniform-sampling ADCs for various biomedical signals (ECG, EEG, EMG, ECoG). Furthermore, the design challenges and motivation of realizing a level-crossing sampling based readout system are described.

Chapter 2 reviews and analyzes previously reported LC-ADCs from different aspects. Based on various window detection methods and feedback DACs, LC-ADCs are classified into various groups. Advantages and disadvantages of each structure are discussed. Since LC-ADCs work in the continuous-time domain without a clock, conventional offset cancellation topologies are not applicable. Therefore, LC-ADCs with automatic onchip offset calibration are reviewed. Moreover, LC-ADCs with various system applications are discussed.

Two standalone level-crossing ADCs for biomedical applications are presented in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, respectively. A single-bit charge accumulation DAC is proposed to save power consumption while relaxing the settling time requirement. Asymmetrical window detection allows the two comparators to consume power more efficiently without sacrificing performance. Innovations at both system level and circuit level pave the way to low-power operation for the LC-ADC. The circuits have been designed and fabricated in AMS 0.18 mm CMOS IC technology. Compared to other LC-ADCs, lower power consumption and less design complexity have been achieved due to the proposed topologies. The event-driven nature makes the proposed ADC very suitable for biomedical applications.

Chapter 5 presents the system integration of an LC-ADC. An ECG recording system with level-crossing sampling is proposed. The system is a voltage and current mixed-mode system. The LNA with fully balanced pseudo-resistors provides good linearity. Resolving the input signal further in the current domain allows for a large dynamic range while operating from a low-voltage supply, avoids leakage and offers more design flexibility. The use of a current feedback DAC eases the integration of calibration blocks in the continuous-time domain. The circuit has been designed and fabricated in a 0.18 μm CMOS IC technology. The proposed system is also very suitable for other biomedical applications where the signals are sparse.

In the final chapter, the thesis is summarized and concluded. The measurement results confirm the effectiveness of the techniques presented in this thesis. Last but not least, possible improvements and research fields that are related to this work are discussed. Suggestions for future work are made.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

  • Friday, 11 September 2015
  • 10:00-11:30
  • Else Kooi Laboratory Colloquium room (DI 01.180)

Remotely powered sensor networks and RFIDs for medical and telecoms applications

Catherine Dehollain
EPFL Lausanne, RFIC Group, Switzerland

Remotely powered systems are used in a lot of different applications, and in particular in the medical and telecoms fields. The main principle of remote powering is to get energy by magnetic, electro-magnetic or electro-acoustic coupling between the sensor node and the base station. Each scenario of use implies a custom-design approach due to the fact that the distance of operation between the sensor node and the base station as well as the maximum targeted volume of the sensor node dictate the choice of the frequency for remote powering and for data communication. Moreover, one single frequency approach for which the same frequency is used for remote powering and data transmission has to be compared to a two frequency solution by taking into account the data rate for communication as well as the power consumption of the sensor node. All these different aspects will be discussed in this talk by starting from a system level approach down to the transistor implementation including the design of the antennas.

Biography
Professor Catherine Dehollain received the Degree in electrical engineering in 1982 and the Ph.D. degree in 1995 from EPFL. From 1982 to 1984, she was a Research Assistant at the Electronics Laboratories (LEG), EPFL. In 1984, she joined the Motorola European Center for Research and Development, Geneva, Switzerland, where she designed integrated circuits applied to telecommunications. In 1990, she joined EPFL as a Senior Assistant at the "Chaire des Circuits et Systemes," where she was involved in impedance broadband matching. Since 1995, she has been responsible for the EPFL-RFIC Group. She has a large experience in CMOS analog and RF circuits design as well as in the design of antennas, coils and transformers. She has participated to different European FP6 and FP7 projects. She has been the project leader of the Swiss CAPED project dedicated to the design of a capsule for the tracking motility in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. She has been the coordinator of the FP7 UltraSponder project dedicated to the design of a remotely powered sensor by using ultrasonic waves to monitor the heart health conditions. She is involved in different biomedical projects and wireless communication projects.

Bioelectronics Colloquium

  • Tuesday, 8 September 2015
  • 12:30-15:00
  • t.b.d.

The monthly meeting of the Bioelectronics Group

Farnaz Nassiri Nia; Samprajani Rout; Alessandro Urso; Gustavo Campos

Literature Colloquium by Farnaz, Presentations by Samprajani and Alessandro and BMI demo by Gustavo.

MSc BME Thesis Presentation

  • Friday, 21 August 2015
  • 14:00-14:45
  • EWI HB17.150

Application of Ultrasound to Remove Thrombi from a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD)

Arundhati Radhakrishnan

Due to limited number of donor hearts and stringent eligibility criteria for heart transplant the Left ventricular assist device (LVAD) has emerged as a relevant treatment option for heart failure. Occlusion in the form of a thrombus (blood clot) is a feared complication associated with the LVAD. The ability of ultrasound to result in effects like cavitation, which is hypothesized to be one of the mechanisms contributing to sonothrombolysis(ultrasound mediated thrombolysis) forms the basis of proposing a solution wherein ultrasound is used to remove thrombi from the LVAD. The proposed solution entails catheter delivery of ultrasound into the LVAD to break down the thrombus.

In this master thesis an experimental setup to conduct sonothrombolysis tests on in vitro clots has been realized. In order to understand the mechanism contributing to a high degree of sonothrombolysis a commonly used method - passive cavitation detection is also employed. In the final experiments sonothrombolysis and passive cavitation detection tests are conducted on two sets of 6 clots each. For majority of the clots, sonothrombolysis occurs at a peak negative pressure of 2.71MPa - 3.18 MPa. Clots which underwent a high degree of sonothrombolysis were always accompanied by high counts and violent movement. We assume the intermittent spikes termed as cavitation events being counted are due to physical effects like inertial bubble collapse, shockwaves and microjets, which are characteristic of inertial cavitation. Hence we can conclude that the high counts are indicative of inertial cavitation and play a dominant role in achieving a high degree of sonothrombolysis. The results of this master thesis provide experimental evidence as to why a certain threshold of peak negative pressure must be attained in order to achieve a high degree of sonothrombolysis. This evidence can be utilized in the next step of catheter design. At this stage it can be said that the application of ultrasound to remove thrombi from the LVAD will prove to be successful if high intensity ultrasound resulting in inertial cavitation can be delivered to the site of the thrombi formation in the LVAD.

MSc thesis presentation Sander Fondse

  • Thursday, 16 July 2015
  • 14:00
  • Timmanzaal (EWI LB1.170)

Sleeping Wireless Energy Transfer and Trickle Charging

Sander Fondse

In a world of improving health care, some diseases are still very hard to diagnose. The most common reasons for this problem is the fact that those diseases are non-symptomatic. To gain better diagnoses of such illnesses long term ExG by using bio-medical implants is a good option. These implants have to be powered by a wireless power link. This thesis analyses the possibilities for the development of a wireless transfer system that can transfer at least 360 ?Wh of energy within six hours through the air and into tissue tissue. After analysis of the influence of the environment on the wave efficiency it is proven that resonant magnetic transfer is the best option for the given scenario. 13.56 MHz is chosen as operating frequency. Energy for the implant is needed at DC level, therefore a rectifier layout is analysed, designed and built out of discrete parts. With the use of discrete components and hand-made inductors, the final operating frequency became 17.50 MHz. The laboratory equipment used restricted the maximum input voltage amplitude to 4.56 V. The final result of this thesis is a prototype wireless energy transfer system that generates a maximum of 75.9 ?W of power continuously at a power efficiency of 10.1 percent at a distance of 15 mm.At a distance of 75 mm, the maximum output power was still equal to 2 ?W. The power efficiency at 75 mm distance is equal to 0.29 percent, which means that to generate 360 ?Wh within six hours the input power must be at least 25.9 mW, a value that can easily be reached without causing flicting damage to human tissue or the system itself. This proves that magnetically coupled inductor systems can be used for the future development of autonomous ExG implants.

MSc thesis presentation Thanas Karapatis

  • Monday, 13 July 2015
  • 13:30-14:15
  • LB01.170, Timmanzaal

Next-generation neuromodulator for epilepsy prevention

Athanasios Karapatis

Closed-loop neurostimulation systems have emerged as a prominent method for treating seizures. However, most of the proposed solutions do not consider the need for fast (real-time) seizure detection or their energy overheads, resulting in systems not suitable for wearable or implantable applications. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a novel closed-loop system that is capable of real-time seizure detection and suppression, while requiring minimal power and energy consumption. The proposed system utilizes a complex Morlet wavelet in combination with a thresholding mechanism to detect the presence of ictal-activity in ECoG signals. We evaluate our system in terms of detection performance (sensitivity, specificity and delay) considering various filter parameters, such as the filter order and various (static) detection thresholds. Additionally, we consider the system?s suitability for implantable applications by evaluating its computational overheads (execution time, energy consumption) when executed on the SiMS low-power processor. We show that decreasing the filter order results in less accurate detection (sensitivity, specificity), a faster detection (delay), and less overheads. In addition, we show that we may further improve the detection accuracy and delay with minimal overheads by considering an input-dependent (adaptive) threshold mechanism. Furthermore, we show that we can effectively trade-off detection accuracy and energy consumption: For example, shrinking filter order by 70% results in a decrease in detection accuracy of only 1%, while allowing us to obtain an improvement in delay by 190 ms (from 710 ms to 520 ms) and in energy consumption by 70% (from 5.04uJ to 1.51uJ). Compared to related work, we show that we can detect seizures significantly faster (492 ms, compared to 970 ms) with the same sensitivity (94%) and at a minimal decrease in specificity of 4.6% (93.60% compared to 98.2%). A prototype implementation of the closed-loop system has successfully been applied in in-vivo experiments, demonstrating its potential for epilepsy treatment.

Conferences

  • Thursday, 25 June 2015
  • Siena, Italy

Circuits and Systems for Electroceuticals

Wouter Serdijn

Invited talk at the 47th annual meeting of the Associazione Gruppo Italiano di Elettronica (GE Association)

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John Choma Commemorative Session: invited talk

  • Monday, 25 May 2015
  • 13:00-16:30
  • Main Auditorium (CCB, Lisbon, Portugal)

Power-efficient Neural Stimulator Circuits

Wouter Serdijn

John Choma Commemorative Special Session 1:
Reconfigurable and Adaptive Analog, Mixed-Signal, and Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits

Session Chair: David Allstot

David AllstotDavid J. Allstot received the B.S. (1969), M.S. (1974), and Ph.D. (1979) degrees from the Univ. of Portland, Oregon State Univ. and the Univ. of California at Berkeley, respectively. He has held several industrial and academic positions. He was a Professor of Electrical Enginering at the University of Washington from 1999 to 2012. In 2000, he was appointed as the Boeing-Egtvedt Chair Professor of Engineering. He served as Acting Chair and Chair of Electrical Engineering from 2004 to 2007. He has advised more than 100 M.S. and Ph.D. graduates. He served as Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, General Co-Chair of the 2002 and 2008 IEEE Intl. Symp. on Circuits and Systems, and as the 2009 President of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

Invited Speakers:

  1. Yannis Tsividis: “Circuits with Adaptive Power Dissipation“
    Yannis TsividisYannis P. Tsividis is Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering. Starting with the first fully integrated MOS operational amplifier, which he demonstrated in 1976, he has done extensive work in analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits at the device, circuit, system, and computer simulation level. He and his students have been responsible for several contributions, ranging from precision device modeling and novel circuit building blocks to new techniques for analog and mixed-signal processing, self-correcting chips, switched-capacitor network theory, RF integrated circuits, mixed analog-digital VLSI computation and the creation of computer simulation programs. This work has resulted in several patents in several countries. He is the recipient of the 1984 IEEE W. R. G. Baker Prize Award for the best IEEE publication, the 1986 European Solid-State Circuits Conference Best Paper Award, and the 1998 and 2008 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Guillemin-Caure Best Paper Award. He is co-recipient of the 1987 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Best Paper Award and the 2003 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference L. Winner Outstanding Paper Award. He is a fellow of the IEEE, and received a Golden Jubilee Medal from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society in 2000. At Columbia, he has received the 1991 Great Teacher Award from the Alumni Association, the 1998 Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Engineering School Alumni Association, and the 2003 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. He received the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2005, and the IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award in 2007.
  2. Franco Maloberti: “Adaptability and Configurability of Data Converters for Nano-meter Technologies“
    Franco MalobertiFranco Maloberti received the Laurea degree in physics (summa cum laude) from the University of Parma, Parma, Italy, in 1968, and the Doctorate Honoris Causa in electronics from the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (Inaoe), Puebla, Mexico, in 1996. He was a Visiting Professor at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-PEL), Zurich, Switzerland and at the EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the TI/J.Kilby Chair Professor at the A&M University, Texas and the Distinguished Microelectronic Chair Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. Presently he is Professor of Microelectronics and Head of the Micro Integrated Systems Group, University of Pavia, Italy. His professional expertise is in the design, analysis, and characterization of integrated circuits and analog digital applications, mainly in the areas of switched-capacitor circuits, data converters, interfaces for telecommunication and sensor systems, and CAD for analog and mixed A/D design. He has written more than 500 published papers on journals or conference proceedings, four books, and holds 34 patents. Dr. Maloberti was the recipient of the XII Pedriali Prize for his technical and scientific contributions to national industrial production, in 1992. He was co-recipient of the 1996 Institute of Electrical Engineers Fleming Premium, the best Paper award, ESSCIRC-2007, and the best paper award, IEEJ Analog Workshop-2007 and 2010. He was the President of the IEEE Sensor Council from 2002 to 2003 and Vice-President, Region 8, of the IEEE CAS Society from 1995 to 1997 and an Associate Editor of IEEE TCAS-II. He was serving as VP-Publications of the IEEE CAS Society 2007-2008. He was distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society 2009-2010 and distinguished lecturer of the Circuits and Systems Society 2012-2013. He received the 1999 IEEE CAS Society Meritorious Service Award, the 2000 CAS Society Golden Jubilee Medal, and the 2000 IEEE Millennium Medal. He received the IEEE CAS Society 2013 Mac Van Valkenburg Award. He is an IEEE Fellow. In 2009 he received the title of Honorary Professor of the University of Macau and he is currently the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Microelectronics Key-Lab of Macau. He is President elect of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.
  3. Edgar Sanchez-Sinencio: “150?650 MHz Low Distortion Inverter-based Adaptive Sine-wave Synthesizer“
    Edgar Sanchez-SinencioResearch Interests: Design and implementation of mixed-signal processing circuits and systems; Power Management; Medical and Environmental Applications; RF Communication Circuits. Awards and Honors: IEEE Fellow (1992); Halliburton Professorship, College of Engineering, Texas A&M University (1993); IEEE Guillemin-Cauer Award (1995);
    Honoris Causa Doctorate awarded by the National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics, and Electronics (INAOE), Mexico, November (1995); Texas Senate Proclamation #373 for Outstanding Accomplishments; IEEE Darlington Award (1997); Texas Instruments Analog Engineering Chair Professor Holder, College of Engineering, Texas A&M University. (March 1999 – January 2002); William & Ruth Neely/ Dow Chemical Faculty Fellow (2000-2001) Engineering Program Texas A&M University; IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Golden Jubilee Medal Recipient (May 2000); Texas Instruments/ Jack Kilby Chair Professor Holder, College of Engineering, Texas A&M University (February 2002-Present); IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Technical Achievement Award (May 2008); Outstanding Professor Award (2011); IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer (2012-2013). Education: Ph.D. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1974); M.S. Stanford University, Stanford California (1970); B.S. National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico (1965).
  4. Hossein Hashemi: “Reconfigurable radio-frequency receivers“
    Hossein HashemiHossein Hashemi received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronics engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA in 2001 and 2003, respectively. He received Caltech engineering and applied science division fellowship award in 1999, Walker von Brimer Foundation Outstanding Accomplishment Award in 2000, Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2001, Intel Foundation Graduate Fellowship Award in 2002 and the Young Scholar Award from Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage (APISH) in 2003.
  5. Randy Geiger: “On-Chip Thermal Management for Reliable Integrated Circuits?
    Randy GeigerRandy Geiger received the BS degree in electrical engineering and the MS degree in mathematics from the University of Nebraska and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from Colorado State University. From 1977 to 1990 he was a faculty member in the Electrical Engineering Department at Texas A&M University and since 1991 he has been a member of the faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University where he currently holds the title Willard and Leitha Richardson Professor. He is a past president of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CAS), a past chair of the Transactions Committee of the IEEE Periodicals Council, and a past member of the IEEE Publications Board. He was the recipient of the IEEE Millennium Medal and the IEEE CAS Society Golden Jubilee Award, and is a Fellow of the IEEE.

John Choma Commemorative Special Session 2:
Ultra-Low-Power Integrated Circuits and Systems for Biomedical Implants

Session Chair: Hossein Hashemi

Hossein HashemiHossein Hashemi received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronics engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA in 2001 and 2003, respectively. He received Caltech engineering and applied science division fellowship award in 1999, Walker von Brimer Foundation Outstanding Accomplishment Award in 2000, Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2001, Intel Foundation Graduate Fellowship Award in 2002 and the Young Scholar Award from Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage (APISH) in 2003.

Invited Speakers:

  1. Mohamad Sawan: “ISFET-based Biosensors for Extracellular pH Gradient Monitoring“
    Mohamad SawanProfessor Mohamad Sawan received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Universit? Laval, Quebec, Canada in 1984, the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, both in electrical engineering, from Universit? de Sherbrooke, Canada, and post-doctorate from McGill University, Montr?al, Canada. He joined Ecole Polytechnique de Montr?al in 1991 where he is currently a Professor in Microelectronics and Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Sawan?s scientific interests are the design and test of mixed-signal (analog, digital and RF) circuits and systems, signal processing, modeling, design, integration, assembly and validation of sensing techniques, laboratory-on-chip devices including micro and nanotechnology processing. These topics are oriented toward the implantable medical devices and diagnostic tools. Dr. Sawan is an honorary professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University , China, and was four times a visiting scientist at University of Metz, France.
    Early in 2000, Dr. Sawan made headlines with what could be called his ”bionic vision.” He had invented an eye implant to enable completely blind people to gain or regain some sight. A leader in the development of intelligent medical devices, his research helps to alleviate the adverse effects of blindness, urological dysfunction, paralysis, deafness and other problems. The invention that has brought his work to the public’s attention is a visual cortical stimulator that operates using a tiny camera. The device is installed on a pair of glasses and transmits images to a controller in the wearer’s pocket. A device in the controller then transmits radio signals to a microstimulator implanted in the visual cortex of the brain, thus enabling a blind person to make out shapes.
    Dr. Sawan is a holder of a Canadian Research Chair (CRC) in Smart Medical Devices. As a CRC, Dr. Sawan?s studies all the processes involved in creating intelligent medical devices, from the design to the clinical trial stage. He also contributes to artificial legs control by an RF signal coming from an implantable ENG recording microsystem, and to bladder control (retention and voiding) in spinal-cord injured patient. Licenses of three of Dr. Sawan?s medical devices were awarded to local industries for the evaluation on humans. Dr. Sawan is Founder and Director of Polystim Neurotechnologies Laboratory, and The Microsystems Strategic Alliance of Quebec (ReSMiQ), a multi-university research center regrouping 10 main Universities in Quebec dealing with Microsystems activities. He is founder of the Eastern Canadian IEEE-Solid State Circuits Society Chapter, the International IEEE NEWCAS Conference. He is cofounder of the International Functional Electrical Stimulation Society, and the International IEEE conference on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BiOCAS). Also, he is cofounder of the BiOCAS committee in the IEEE circuits and systems society, where he was elected president for 2 years. He is cofounder and associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on BiOCAS (TBCAS). Dr. Sawan was the IEEE Circuits and systems society representative in the International Biotechnology Council committee, and he is editor and guest editor of several prestigious scientific Journals.
    Dr. Sawan published more than 400 papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, offered more than 60 invited talks/keynotes, and he was awarded 9 patents. Dr. Sawan has been elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada; the most prestigious honors aspired for by Canadian Engineering researchers, and Fellow of the IEEE; the most prestigious honor aspired for by world wide Electrical Engineers. Dr. Sawan has been recipient of the Medal of Honor from the President of Lebanon for outstanding achievements, the Bombardier Award for technology transfer, and the Barbara Turnbull award, one of the most prestigious awards in biomedical research in Canada.
  2. Ralph Etienne-Cummings: “Real-time Compressive Sensing in Hardware: Maximizing Communication Channel Utility in Power Impoverished Environments“
    Ralph Etienne-CummingsI received my B. Sc. in physics, 1988, from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. I completed my M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in December 1991 and 1994, respectively. I have served as Chairman of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Technical Committee on Sensory Systems and on Neural Systems and Application, and was re-elected as a member of CAS Board of Governors from 1/2007 – 1/2009. I was also the General Chair of the IEEE BioCAS Conference in 2008, and serves on its Steering Committee. I was also a member of Imagers, MEMS, Medical and Displays Technical Committee of the ISSCC Conference from 1999 – 2006. I also serve on numerous editorial boards and was recently appointed Deputy Editor in Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. I am the recipient of the NSF’s Career and Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Awards. In 2006, I was named a Visiting African Fellow and a Fulbright Fellowship Grantee for his sabbatical at University of Cape Town, South Africa. I was invited to be a lecturer at the National Academies of Science Kavli Frontiers Program, held in November 2007. I won the 2010 JHU Applied Physics Lab R.W. Hart Prize for Best R&D Project in Development. I have also won publication awards, including the 2011 Best Paper Award for IEEE Transactions of Biomedical Circuits and Systems, 2003 Best Paper Award of the EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing and “Best Ph.D. in a Nutshell” at the IEEE BioCAS 2008 Conference, and have been recognized for his activities in promoting the participation of women and minorities in science, technology, engineering and mathematic. In 2012, I was recognized as a “ScienceMaker”, as part of the HistoryMakers which is an African American history archive and was elected as an IEEE Fellow for contributions in “neuromorphic sensory-motor circuits and systems”.
  3. Wouter Serdijn: “Power-efficient Neural Stimulator Circuits“
    Wouter SerdijnWouter A. Serdijn (M’98, SM’08, F’11) was born in Zoetermeer (‘Sweet Lake City’), the Netherlands, in 1966. He received the M.Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 1989 and 1994, respectively. Currently, he is an associate professor at Delft University of Technology, where he heads the Section Bioelectronics.
    His research interests include low-voltage, ultra-low-power and ultra wideband integrated circuits and systems for biosignal conditioning and detection, neuroprosthetics, transcutaneous wireless communication, power management and energy harvesting as applied in, e.g., hearing instruments, cardiac pacemakers, cochlear implants, neurostimulators, portable, wearable, implantable and injectable medical devices and electroceuticals.
    He is co-editor and co-author of the books EMI-Resilient Amplifier Circuits (Springer 2013), Ultra Low-Power Biomedical Signal Processing: an analog wavelet filter approach for pacemakers (Springer, 2009), Circuits and Systems for Future Generations of Wireless Communications (Springer, 2009), Power Aware Architecting for data dominated applications (Springer, 2007), Adaptive Low-Power Circuits for Wireless Communications (Springer, 2006), Research Perspectives on Dynamic Translinear and Log-Domain Circuits (Kluwer, 2000), Dynamic Translinear and Log-Domain Circuits (Kluwer, 1998) and Low-Voltage Low-Power Analog Integrated Circuits (Kluwer, 1995). He authored and co-authored 8 book chapters, 2 patents and more than 300 scientific publications and presentations. He teaches Circuit Theory, Analog Signal Processing, Micropower Analog IC Design and Bioelectronics. He received the Electrical Engineering Best Teacher Award in 2001 and 2004.
    He has served, a.o., as General Co-Chair for IEEE BioCAS 2013, Technical Program Chair for IEEE BioCAS 2010 and as Technical Program Chair for IEEE ISCAS 2010, 2012 and 2014, as a member of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2006?2011), as chair of the Analog Signal Processing Technical Committee of the IEEE Circuits and Systems society, as a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (T-BioCAS) and as Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems?I: Regular Papers (2010?2011). He will be General Co-Chair for IEEE ISCAS 2015.
    Wouter A. Serdijn is an IEEE Fellow, an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and a mentor of the IEEE.
  4. Herming Chiueh: “The Development of Ulta-Low Power Mixed-Signal Processor for Epileptic Seizure Detection and Wearable-Device Applications“
    Herming ChiuehHerming Chiueh received his B.S. degree from the Department of Electrophysics, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan in 1992, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 1994 and 2002. From 1996-2002, he was with Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, California. Dr. Chiueh has participated the VLSI effort on several large projects in USC/ISI and most recently participated the development of a 55-million transistor processing-in-memory (PIM) chip. He is currently an Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. His research interests include system-on-chip design methodology, thermal management for VLSI, low-power integrated circuits, Neural interface circuits, and biomimetic systems. IEEE Services ? Member of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society since 1990 ? Conference Finance Chair: 2007 IEEE International Workshop on Memory Technology, Design and Testing (MTDT) ? Technical Program Committee: Thermal Issues in Emerging Technologies, Theory and Applications (THETA2008), Thermal investigations of ICs and Systems (THERMINC 05-08) ? Reviewer of papers submitted to IEEE Tran. on VLSI, Microelectronic Journal and Journal of Information Technology and Applications ? Reviewer of papers submitted to IEEE VLSI-Symposia, IEEE TENCON, IEEE MTDT, IEEE ICECS, IEEE ISCAS, IEEE SSMSD, THERMINIC and Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI.
  5. Roman Genov: “Implantable Wireless Closed-Loop Neurostimulators for the Treatment of Intractable Epilepsy“
    Roman GenovRoman Genov received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, NY in 1996 and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD in 1998 and 2003 respectively.
    Dr. Genov held engineering positions at Atmel Corporation, Columbia, MD in 1995 and Xerox Corporation, Rochester, NY in 1996. He was a visiting researcher in the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland in 1998 and in the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA in 1999. He is presently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada, where he is a member of Electronics Group and Biomedical Engineering Group and the Director of Intelligent Sensory Microsystems Laboratory.
    Dr. Genov?s research interests are primarily in analog integrated circuits and systems for energy-constrained biological, medical, and consumer sensory applications, such as implantable, wearable or disposable sensory microsystems, energy-efficient sensory signal processors and wireless sensors, including brain-chip interfaces, neuro-stimulators, image sensors, optical and electro-chemical DNA microarrays, and other biosensors.
    Dr. Genov is a co-recipient of Best Paper Award of IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference, Best Student Paper Award of IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Best Paper Award of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Sensory Systems Technical Committee, Brian L. Barge Award for Excellence in Microsystems Integration, MEMSCAP Microsystems Design Award, DALSA Corporation Award for Excellence in Microsystems Innovation, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research Next Generation Award. He was a Technical Program Co-chair at IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-II: Express Briefs and IEEE Signal Processing Letters. Currently he is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems and member of IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference International Program Committee serving in Imagers, MEMS, Medical, and Displays (IMMD) Subcommittee and in Demonstrations Subcommittee.

    6. Additional information ...

ISCAS 2015

  • Sunday, 24 -- Wednesday, 27 May 2015
  • Lisbon, Portugal

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems

Queridos amigos,

On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we are pleased and honored to invite and welcome you to Lisbon and to the 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2015). The conference theme, ?Enabling Technologies for Societal Challenges?, in line with the 2020 European Research and Innovation Roadmap and the Grand Engineering Challenges, suits extremely well our community?s inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research activities.

ISCAS is the main event of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the world?s premier networking forum for leading researchers in the highly active fields of theory, design and implementation of circuits and systems. The Technical Program Co-Chairs for this year edition, Jo?o Goes and Philipp H?fliger, have assembled an outstanding program with three full days of lectures and poster sessions covering 16 tracks. The most outstanding contributions to these tracks will be considered for the Best Student Paper Award contest and the Best Live Demo Award contest. The winners of both awards will be selected and announced during the conference.

ISCAS 2015 also offers high-quality and leading?edge tutorials and special sessions from worldwide experts, either in specific and in multidisciplinary areas, suited for those looking for a birds-eye view on a new research area or to improve their areas of expertise. A set of world-class keynote speeches is being prepared and will be announced soon.

Apart from the scientific contributions, ISCAS 2015 will offer a forum that promotes the interaction between industry, start-ups, PhD students, academia and research funding agencies. This interaction will have place through industry presence, debates and talks.

ISCAS 2015 maintains the Women in CAS (WiCAS) activity as well as the Young Professionals Program (YPP) activity and will also host a ?Conference Leadership Workshop?, a Special ?John Choma Commemorative? Session with 10 distinguished invited speakers and other events, further enriching the technical program.

As for the social program we will try to match the quality of the technical program and of the tutorial offerings. On Tuesday, the Award Ceremony will be held in an opera house auditorium followed by the Gala Dinner in the Convento do Beato, a magnificent former monastery that dates back to the 15th century.

ISCAS 2015 will assist in sharing and disseminating your specific and inter- and cross-disciplinary technical achievements and will bring together diverse participants, histories and cultures. We look forward to your active participation in this magnificent event!

Um abra?o, Jorge Fernandes and Wouter Serdijn General Chairs

Additional information ...

PhD thesis defence

  • Friday, 24 April 2015
  • 12:00-14:30
  • Senaatszaal (tentative), Aula. Delft University of Technology

Design of efficient and safe neural stimulators - a multidisciplinary approach

Marijn van Dongen

Neural stimulation is an established treatment methodology for an increasing number of diseases. Electrical Stimulation injects a stimulation signal through electrodes that are implanted in the target area of the central or peripheral nervous system in order to evoke a specific neuronal response that suppresses or treats pathological activity. This thesis discusses the design of neural stimulators: the device that is responsible for generating the stimulation signal in a safe, efficient and controlled manner. The design of such a device requires a highly multidisciplinary approach which involves disciplines such as neuroscience, electrophysiology, electrochemistry and electrical engineering.
The first part of this thesis focuses on the processes associated with the neuronal recruitment. After describing the stimulation processes in detail at various levels, the discussion zooms in on the processes at the electrode-tissue interface and in particular the electrochemical behavior. Many neural stimulators include coupling capacitors between the stimulator and the electrodes to reduce the risk of potentially harmful electrochemical reactions. However, it is shown that coupling capacitors also have negative implications that need to be considered, such as a shift in the equilibrium potential of the electrode-tissue interface. Also, the reversibility of charge transfer processes at the electrode-tissue interface is analyzed. Most studies rely on monitoring the electrodetissue interface potential to determine the maximum reversible charge injection limits. By measuring the reversible charge in a more direct way, it was found that irreversible charge transfer processes already play a role for stimulation intensities that are well below the established charge injection limits.
The extensive description of the stimulation process is furthermore used to introduce a fundamentally different stimulation paradigm. Instead of using a constant current or voltage to stimulate the electrodes, a high frequency, switched-mode stimulation signal is applied. The advantage of such a stimulation pattern is that it can be generated in a power efficient way by the neurostimulator circuit using switched-mode operation that is common in energy efficient amplifiers (class-D operation) or power management circuits. The efficacy of the proposed stimulation pattern is verified both using modeling as well as using in vitro measurements by analyzing the response of patch-clamped Purkinje cells.
The second part of the thesis focuses on the electrical design of neural stimulators. The first system is designed to be used in a specific neuroscientific experiment and features arbitrary waveform stimulation. The user has full flexibility over the choice of stimulation waveform, while the stimulator circuit guarantees safety by ensuring charge balanced operation. The stimulator circuit is realized and included in a system implementation that is suitable for the in vivo experimental setup. The stimulation pulse (which uses a burst pattern) is synchronized with auditory stimulation in an attempt to recondition the neural pathways in a mouse that suffers from tinnitus.
The second design implements the high-frequency switched-mode stimulation pattern that was introduced in the first part of the thesis. The system features an unfiltered forward buck-boost converter at its core to directly stimulate the target tissue. It is possible to operate the system with multiple independent channels that connect to an arbitrary electrode configuration, making the system well suited for current steering techniques. Furthermore, comprehensive control was implemented using a dual clock configuration that allows both autonomic tonic stimulation, as well as single shot stimulation. Each channel can be configured individually with tailored stimulation parameters and multiple channels can operate in a synchronized fashion. The system is power efficient, especially when compared with state-of-the-art constant current stimulators with an adaptive power supply that operate in multichannel mode. Efficiency improvements up to 200% compared with state of the art constant current stimulators are demonstrated. Furthermore, the number of external components required is reduced to a single inductor.

Additional information ...

Bioelectronics Colloquium

  • Friday, 24 April 2015
  • 10:00-11:30
  • Snijderszaal: EWI-LB01.010, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD, Delft

The future of brain, spine and nerve stimulation

Prof. Dirk de Ridder, MD PhD
Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand

ABSTRACT:

Invasive neuromodulation of the central and peripheral nervous system is still in its infancy, but recently the advent of burst stimulation and high frequency stimulation (10 kHz) have shown that results of neurostimulation can be improved not only by more accurate targeting but also by communicating to the nervous system in other languages, i.e. by using other stimulation designs.

The rationale behind burst stimulation, noise stimulation, reconditioning stimulation and pleasure stimulation are embedded in a better understanding of brain homeostasis and allostasis. The talk will highlight how the future of brain, spine and nerve stimulation might dramatically change, by changing stimulation designs, rather than increasing accuracy.

Collaboration between bioelectronic engineers and neuromodulators (neurosurgeons, pain therapists,?) is key to developing improved health care for neural disorders.

BIOGRAPHY:

Dirk De Ridder, MD, PhD, is the Neurological Foundation professor of Neurosurgery at the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago in New Zealand. His main interest is the understanding and treatment of phantom perceptions (sound, pain), especially by use of functional imaging navigated non-invasive (TMS, tDCS, tACS, tRNS, LORETA neurofeedback) and invasive (implants) neuromodulation techniques. He has developed ?burst? and ?noise? stimulation as novel stimulation designs for implants, and is working on other stimulation designs.

He has published 35 book chapters, co-edited the Textbook of Tinnitus, and has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers of which 180 PubMed listed papers. He is reviewer for more than 65 journals.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Section Bioelectronics

Wouter A. Serdijn

w.a.serdijn@tudelft.nl

Sense of Contact

  • Thursday, 2 April 2015
  • 11:00-11:20
  • Kontakt der Kontinenten, Soesterberg

Sensing and Stimulating the Body with Electroceuticals

Wouter Serdijn

The 21st century will be the century of unravelling the intricacies of the brain and in which we will explore the use of electricy to interact with our electro-chemical mainframe better. In this talk I will explain how electroceuticals, the electronic counterparts of pharmaceuticals, can help to successfully treat neurological disorders. Further, I will sketch a technological avenue of their future development by making electroceuticals smaller, more energy efficient and more intelligent.

Additional information ...

Bioelectronics meeting

  • Tuesday, 24 March 2015
  • 12:30-15:00
  • t.b.d.

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Thanas Karapatis, Cees-Jeroen Bes, Sander Fondse

PhD Thesis Defence

  • Thursday, 5 March 2015
  • 12:00-11:30
  • Aula Senaatszaal

Sensor management for surveillance and tracking. An operational perspective. March 5, 12.00 Aula, Senaatszaal. Promotor A. Yarovoy, co- promotor, H. Driessen

Fotios Katsilieris

Defence, March 5, 12.00 Aula, Senaatszaal. Sensor management for surveillance and tracking. An operational perspective. In the literature, several approaches to sensor (including radar) management can be found. These can be roughly grouped into: a) rule-based or heuristics; b) task-based; c) information-driven; and d) risk/threat-based. These approaches are compared in this dissertation and it is found that there is not a single approach that is both Bayes-optimal and takes into account explicitly the user requirements in different operational contexts. In order to overcome the challenges with the existing approaches, this dissertation proposes managing the uncertainty in higher-level quantities (as per the JDL model) that are directly of interest to an operator and directly related to the operational goal of a radar system. The proposed approach is motivated by the threat assessment process, which is an integral part of defence missions. Accordingly, a prominent example of a commonly used higher-level quantity is the threat-level of a target. The key advantage of the proposed approach is that it results in Bayes-optimal sensor control that also takes into account the operational context in a model-based manner. In other words: a) a radar operator can select the aspects of threat that are relevant to the operational context at hand; and b) external information about the arrival of targets and other scenario parameters can be included when defining the models used in the signal processing algorithms, leading to context-adaptive sensor management.

Additional information ...

Bioelectronics group meeting

  • Tuesday, 24 February 2015
  • 12:30-15:00
  • 14.240

The monthly group meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Farnaz Nassiri Nia, Yao Liu

MEST event

  • Tuesday, 17 February 2015
  • 09:00-13:15
  • Room J, 3ME Faculty

TU Delft in ISSCC 2015

Program:

9:00 Prof. Kofi Makinwa Welcome
9:10 A. Carimatto A 67,392 SPAD PVTB-Compensated Multi-Channel Digital SiPMwith 432 column-Parallel 48ps 17b TDCs for Endoscopic Time-of-Flight PET
9:50 M. Shahmohammadi A 1/f Noise Up-conversion Reduction Technique Applied to Class-D and Class-F Oscillators
10:15 R. Quan A 4600um2 1.5oC (3s) 0.9kS/s Thermal-Diffusivity Temperature Sensor with VCO-Based Readout
10:40 Break
10:55 L. Xu A 110dB SNR ADC with +/-30V Input Common-Mode Range and 8uV offset for Current Sensing Applications
11:35 Y. He A 0.05-mm2 1-V Capacitance-to-Digital Converter Based on Period Modulation
12:00 H.Jiang A 30-ppm <80-nJ Ring-Down-Based Readout Circuit for Resonant Sensors

There will be free pizza from 12:45 to 13:15

MSc thesis presentation Jialue Wang

  • Thursday, 27 November 2014
  • 14:00-14:45
  • t.b.d.

MSc thesis presentation Jialue Wang

Jialue Wang
TU Delft and the Holst Centre

Jialue Wang will present the results of his MSc thesis project at the Holst Centre on high-herformance DC-DC converters for RF energy harvesting nodes

Bioelectronics group meeting

  • Wednesday, 26 November 2014
  • 13:00-15:30
  • t.b.d.

Monthly meeting of the Bioelectronics group

On stage: Senad on a low-power ECG front-end, Andre and Wouter on BioCAS 2014 and Gustavo on optimizing the RF energy harvester and boost converter interface

Bioelectronics group meeting

  • Tuesday, 14 October 2014
  • 12:30-15:00
  • t.b.d.

Bioelectronics group meeting

Senad Hiseni, Yao Liu, Andre Mansano, Mark Stoopman

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics. This time on ExG frontend, ESSCIRC report, measurements of Mark's frequency synthesizer and PA.

MEST Colloquium

  • Thursday, 9 October 2014
  • 12:30-13:30
  • EWI Chip

Electronics in Nano-Era: Are we Facing a Reliability Wall?

Said Hamdioui

The talk will address technology scaling and its impact on different aspects of IC and electronics, and in particular the emerging reliability bottlenecks. First the basics of scaling will be covered, together with its impact on integration density, performance and power. The technology outlook will be analyzed in order to extract the challenges with respect to design, test and reliability both for near and long terms. IC realization process will be (re) defined while considering the technology trends and business pressure. Possible ways for the realization of future systems will be discussed.

MSc thesis presentation Thanos Ramkaj

  • Wednesday, 8 October 2014
  • 10:00-11:00
  • Snijderszaal, EWI LB01.010

Analysis and Design of High-Speed Successive Approximation Register ADCs

Thanos Ramkaj

HIGH performance Analog-to-DigitalConverters (ADCs) are highly demanded by modern instrumentation, data acquisition and wire-line/wireless communication systems. However, the need for high speed is always accompanied by high power consumption and large area since amplifiers with large bandwidth and analog devices with low noise and high linearity are mandatory to fulfill the stringent requirements of high speed operation. Benefits of technology scaling and the flexibility of digital circuits raise the design challenges towards high gain, low noise and high linearity amplifiers, increasing the difficulty of implementing various ADC architectures with traditional analog techniques. New applications that constantly demand better performance in terms of speed and accuracy, have created a need for energy-efficient ADCs in the GHz sampling frequency and low-to-moderate effective resolution range. The dominantly digital nature of Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADCs makes them a good candidate for an energy-efficient and scalable design, overcoming the aforementioned challenges, but its sequential operation limits its applicability in the GHz sampling range. It is of great interest to systematically study and understand the trade-offs in realizing such multi-GS/s, low power ADCs.

This thesis work analyzes the trade-offs in realizing SAR ADCs in the GHz range in terms of speed, accuracy, power and area. First, basic ADC principles such as quantization and sampling are discussed and performance metrics are introduced. Then, the theory is summarized and the advantages and disadvantages of various types of ADC architectures for high speed operation are pointed out, while analysis and evaluation of system and circuit level techniques, in order to overcome the speed limitation of SAR ADCs, and extend their operation in the GHz sampling frequency with affordable power and area trade-offs follow. Based on the aforementioned analysis, a novel architecture is proposed to break the speed limit due to sequential operation, and realize an 8-bit single channel 2 GS/s SAR ADC. The proposed architecture combines optimally the multibit/ cycle approach with interleaving comparators. Furthermore, other techniques such as separating the sample and DAC functions, a segmentation switching capacitive DAC with sub-fF unit capacitors and a very lowpower reference generator contribute in speed enhancement and power reduction. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed architecture and techniques is verified through both behavioral modeling (MATLAB, Verilog-A) and transistor level circuit simulations. The sub-blocks composing the ADC such as comparators, DACs, T/H, reference buffers, preamplifiers, biasing blocks, clock drivers are designed in 40 nm digital LP CMOS process and simulation results both for individual blocks as well as for the whole ADC are presented. Simulation results indicate a sample rate of 2 GS/s with an SNDR of 41.8 dB at Nyquist input frequency (1 GHz) and above 35 dB until 10 GHz input frequency, while consuming a total power of 17.2mWat 1.2 V supply.

MSc ME Thesis Presentation Menno Vastenholt

  • Monday, 29 September 2014
  • 10:00-11:00
  • EWI Building, LB01.150 (Lipkenszaal)

A Sub-GHz UWB Correlation Receiver for Wireless Biomedical Communication

Menno Vastenholt

MSc CE Thesis Presentation

  • Thursday, 25 September 2014
  • 14:00-14:45
  • HB 17.150

Guaranteed Quality ECG Signal Compression Algorithm

Dongni Fan

The aim of the project is to develop an ECG signal compression algorithm that has a high compression ratio while guaranteeing signal quality.

An electrocardiography (ECG) signal is a representation of cardiac activity and has an need to be compressed to reduce data storage requirements. Previous ECG signal compression techniques have shown steady improvement on compression ratio. However, these techniques generally lack quality considerations, so their applications are limited. We present a discrete cosine transform (DCT) based compression scheme and use beat detection which considerably improve the compression ratio. The quality of the compressed signal is configurable, and the accuracy of the signal is maintained given a signal quality requirement.

The algorithm is implemented in a software/hardware solution. Some parts need to be done in the software. As a proof of concept, we have chosen the filter to be implemented in hardware. Mathworks HDL coder was used for generating RTL code and testbenches. Results show that our algorithm is capable of maintaining the specified quality, has a better compression ratio compared to previous work and is also capable to compress noisy ECG signals.

Additional information ...

  • Wednesday, 10 September 2014
  • 17:00-19:00
  • /pub (EWI basement)

MEST welcome drink

Meet and greet your friends and colleagues with a FREE Drink to say Hallo !!!

Organized by MEST student association

Additional information ...

Introductory Colloquium Arundhati Radhakrishnan

  • Tuesday, 9 September 2014
  • 14:00-15:00
  • t.b.d.

On techniques to remove blood clods from the rotor in a left ventricular assist device by means of ultrasound

Arundhati Radhakrishnan

Arundhati will present the first results from her experiments and further plans in the form of an Introductory Colloquium as part of her duties for her MSc final project in Biomedical Engineering.

Bioelectronics-ELCA daytrip

  • Wednesday, 27 August 2014
  • 09:00-22:00
  • Haarlem and Zandvoort

Bioelectronics-ELCA daytrip


By bus to Haarlem, guided tour through the city, visiting Teylers Museum incl. lunch, boat tour on the Spaarne, by bus to Zandvoort for the BBQ.

Additional information ...

  • Wednesday, 27 August 2014
  • 14:00-15:00
  • HB 17.150

CMOS-based implantable electronics for bioscientific and medical applications

Takashi Tokuda
NAIST, Japan

CMOS-based implantable device technology is attracting a lot of interest because of its potential for next-generation bioscientific and medical applications. In this presentation, circuit design, device packaging, and functional demonstration of some CMOS-based implantable devices are presented. An implantable imaging device for in vivo (in a living body) optical brain imaging, implementation of light source for neural stimulation in optogenetics, and flexible neural stimulator for retinal prosthesis will be mainly described.

Additional information ...

Bioelectronics Section meeting

  • Thursday, 14 August 2014
  • 12:30-15:00
  • EWI HB17.150

Monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

The RF Task Force (Yao, Mark, Andre, Gustavo), Gustavo, Jialue

Bioelectronics Section Meeting

  • Wednesday, 9 July 2014
  • 12:30-15:00
  • t.b.d. by Marijn

The monthly meeting of the Section Bioelectronics

Yao Liu, Andre Mansano

Electroceuticals Webinar

  • Monday, 7 July 2014
  • 14:00-15:30
  • EWI HB17.150

Electroceuticals Webinar

Bioelectronics webseminar meeting, Monday, July 7, 14:00 hrs

Dear all,

GlaxoSmithKline (the inventors of the word "Electroceutical"), http://www.gsk.com/, has launched an initiative to make groups around the world collaborate on their mission, the development of Bioelectronic Medicine.

Which is what we do, from an electronics perspective.

In order to facilitate this collaboration, they have created a special web portal for collaboration that also includes videos on recent developments in the various disciplines, the Innovation Challenge Portal:

www.bioelectronicmedicinesresearch.com

Two web seminars can be found on this web portal that I would like to watch together with you (+ everybody else that is interested), on:

Monday, July 7, at 14:00 hrs, in the Davidse Room (EWI 18.230).

Webinar 1: Disruptive neural interface technologies

Moderator, Jack Judy, PhD

In this webinar moderated by Jack Judy of University of Florida, presenters explain how non-traditional approaches developed for the CNS could be adapted to interface with peripheral nervous system. Techniques include magnetic ultrasound, nanomolecular technologies, neural dust and non genetic optical reporters (e.g: Nanodiamonds). And, if time permits, Webinar 2: High-density peripheral recording and stimulation Moderator, Moderator, Dustin Tyler (CWRU) How can we scale to high density neuronal recording and stimulation? How can we best achieve signal analysis and modelling in the peripheral nervous system? In this webinar moderated by Dustin Tyler (Case Western Reserve University) we learn more about the challenges of high-resolution nerve interfaces. You are all welcome to attend. Wouter

Invited talk in Lausane

  • Thursday, 19 June 2014
  • 11:00-12:00
  • EPFL, Lausanne

Wireless Active Implantable Medical Devices

Wouter Serdijn
Delft University of Technology

Additional information ...

Bioelectronics Section meeting

  • Thursday, 12 June 2014
  • 12:30-15:00
  • Timmanzaal, EWI LB 01.170
Reza Lotfi, Marijn van Dongen, Walter Hamelink

The monthly meeting of the Bioelectronics group

ISCAS 2014

  • Sunday, 1 -- Thursday, 5 June 2014
  • Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia

2014 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems

Welcome from the General Chairs of the Organising Committee

On behalf of the Organising Committee we welcome you to Melbourne, ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2011, 2012 and 2013 as the most liveable City in the world, to Australia, and to the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

ISCAS?2014 is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Circuits and Systems Society (IEEE CASS), and generously supported by the State Government of Victoria and the Melbourne Convention Bureau.

As you all know, ISCAS is the flagship annual conference of IEEE CASS, and it is well established as the world?s premier networking forum in the fields of theory, design and implementation of circuits and systems. As a result of the release of its 2012 Vision and Mission (see ieee-cas.org), the CASS goal is to develop ISCAS also as the leading forum for pioneering circuits and systems contributions to humanity?s grand challenges.

Accordingly, the special theme of ISCAS 2014 is nano/bio circuits and systems applied to enhancing living and lifestyles, particularly in relation to the multidisciplinary grand challenges in healthcare and wellbeing, the environment and climate change.

Keynotes

ISCAS?2014 has four keynote presentations, two of which address crucial aspects of high priority grand challenges, in health and in sustainability, while the other two describe frontier work at the extreme ends, in terms of scale, of circuits and systems engineering ? new devices that promise to sustain the remarkable advances in semiconductors that we have enjoyed for over 60 years, and design methods for systems of systems, which are relevant to so many grand challenge problems:

Dr Donald E. Ingber from Harvard University on Monday will present Microengineered Human Organs On Chips, describing advances he and his team have made in the engineering of microfluidic ?Organs-on-Chips??microchips lined by living human cells created with microfabrication techniques that recapitulate organ-level structure and functions as a way to replace animal testing for drug development and mechanistic discovery.

Professor Iven Mareels from The University of Melbourne in his talk on Wednesday, titled Circuits and Systems for Modern Irrigation Management, describes work over 15 years on circuits and systems research, development and commercialisation of an internet-of-things dedicated to smart irrigation water management.

Professor Victor Zhirnov from the Semiconductor Research Corporation, in Scaling Limits of Nanoionic Devices, elaborates how recognition that crystal ?defects? could be used as controllable entities, rather than being seen as imperfections, leads to the possibility that nanoionic resistive switching devices may be scalable down to ~ 1nm and thus may offer a promising path to replace the foundation of today?s computing technologies.

Dr. Stephan C. Stilkerich from Airbus Group will present Model Based Engineering of Highly Mobile Systems of Systems: Safe Aeroplanes; Safer Automobiles, with an introduction and post-talk discussion moderated by Dr Graham Hellestrand from Embedded Systems Technology. This keynote deals with front-line approaches to engineering electronic systems and their software, that are required to perform real-time control critical for the safe operation of airplanes and cars, including while operating in dense traffic and simultaneously reducing environmental impact.

Technical Program Regular Sessions

The technical program consists of tutorials, lecture papers, poster papers and demonstrations accepted based on peer review of the submission from regular open calls. We have retained many of the ISCAS features that have evolved in recent years, and added new features, some in response to ISCAS feedback, to continue to improve attendees? experience of the event.

We are very pleased to report that ISCAS?2014 will be first time that the new CASS Conference App will be made available to all attendees, and we look forward to your feedback to improve it. The CAS Society has supported the development of the Conference App, through Conference4Me, to facilitate the navigation of the conference agenda and venues, secure access to proceedings, micro-blogging, live discussion and ranking of papers, providing feedback to organizers and general improvement of attendees? experience at CAS conferences.

Lecture papers follow the traditional ISCAS format. There are nine lecture sessions over three days, with session having 11 parallel streams. Sessions are 90 minutes with up to five papers, allowing 18 minute for each including introduction, presentation and discussion.

The Demonstration session and Poster sessions are held over 3 hours commencing at the 3pm coffee break on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The Demonstration session is Monday only. There are no competing parallel lecture sessions during the first 90 minutes of each day?s Posters/Demonstrations, allowing increased attention to them from all attendees.

We have increased the length of the lunch break to 90 minutes. This will allow more time for the CASS side meetings, particularly the annual meetings of the 15 CASS Technical Committees, which are playing an increasingly important role in leadership of the Society. The longer break will also provide a more relaxed walk to the nearby restaurants for the lunch break, and we hope it will facilitate a greater level of networking.

Following the ISCAS?2013 lead we continue the trial of offering free attendance at Tutorial and CAS-FEST sessions for all ISCAS?2014 registrants. We have also expanded both the tutorial program and CAS-FEST. CASS? goals in these moves are both to widen the reach of and to increase participation in the tutorial program and CAS-FEST. We will greatly appreciate feedback from attendees on the value you perceive in these offerings.

Tutorials

ISCAS?2014 commences on Sunday with 19 half-day and 1 full-day Tutorial sessions.

We have included two Tutorial sessions on Technology Management in response to feedback from CASS industry members:

T19 ? Interfacing Organisations: How to successfully manage organizational interfaces by Felix Lustenberger; and T20 - Managing Technology Professionals by Tuna B. Tarim: Transitioning from Individual Contributor to Management. Felix and Tuna are CASS members and also leaders of IEEE?s Technology Management Council, which was recently approved to transition to an IEEE Society.

Also in response to feedback, from the Women in CAS (WiCAS) and Young Professionals Program (formerly GoLD) groups, is a tutorial on career development, social skills, collaboration and networking:

T7 ? Engineering Networks that Work: Design Tools for Your Career by Dr Margaret Collins Margaret is a Cardiff-based research consultant, professional coach and trainer with extensive experience in helping people achieve their career goals. Come ready to get involved ? this is an active workshop session!

A third initiative in the Tutorials is a full day introduction to Memristive devices, circuits, systems and applications, the topic of this year?s CAS-FEST. This will cover all aspects of this emerging technology, namely: theory, practical nanodevices, physical switching mechanisms, circuits and emerging applications:

T21 ? If it?s Pinched it?s a memristor (AM), Professor Leon Chua T22 ? ReRAM Memristive Devices: Electrochemical Systems at the Atomic Scale (AM), Dr Ilia Valov T23 ? Analog and Mixed-Signal Applications of Memristive Devices (PM), Professor Dmitri Strukov T24 Integrating memristive devices in CMOS neuromorphic computing architectures (PM), Professor Giacomo Indiveri The aim of these sessions is to provide sufficient introduction to enable a typical ISCAS attendee to appreciate the state of the art material that will be presented in the CAS-FEST sessions.

CAS-FEST

Since its inception in 2010, the Circuits and Systems ? Forum on Emerging and Selected Topics has progressively become more closely integrated with ISCAS. This year?s topic was again selected from an open call and the winning proposal, from members of the Nonlinear Circuits and Systems (NCAS) Technical Committee, has taken still further this level of integration with ISCAS. This includes the presentation of invited introductory tutorials in the regular ISCAS Tutorials program (see above), the inclusion of three Special Sessions in the regular ISCAS Lecture Papers program, a full day of CAS-FEST Special Sessions on Wednesday, and the highlight full day of CAS-FEST Keynote talks on Thursday.

With this additional integration, CAS-FEST 2014 will bring together leading experts and provide a thorough coverage of the field of memristors, from an introduction to those unfamiliar with the field, through solidifying existing knowledge, to highlighting developments at the forefront of the field, and pointing to future challenges and promising directions for research. We hope that this coordinated approach will result in a landmark event in the development of the field.

Social Events and Awards Dinner

We are planning the now standard set of ISCAS evening events, with the Welcome Reception on Sunday evening soon after the conclusion of Tutorials, the WiCAS/YPP (formerly GoLD) event on early Monday evening, the Awards Dinner on Tuesday evening, and the Closing Reception immediately following the last session on Wednesday. Watch out for the Australian twists!

We hope that you will have a rewarding and enjoyable time in Melbourne at ISCAS?2014 and look forward to meeting as many of you as we can!

Professor Jugdutt (Jack) Singh & Dr David Skellern General Co-Chairs, ISCAS 2014

Additional information ...

Invited talk Wouter A. Serdijn

  • Friday, 30 May 2014
  • 13:00-14:30
  • University of Melbourne

Circuits and Systems for Electroceuticals

Wouter Serdijn

Title: Circuits and Systems for Electroceuticals Abstract: In the design process of electroceuticals, such as hearing instruments, pacemakers, cochlear implants and neurostimulators, the tradeoff between performance and power consumption is a delicate balancing act. In this presentation I will cover techniques to deal with the acquisition and generation of electrophysiological signals and to provide reliable communication with and through the body. We will discuss signal-specific analog-to-digital converters, morphological filters, arbitrary-waveform neurostimulators, energy harvesting and ultra wideband wireless communication from a low-power circuits and system perspective. Design examples and their performance will be discussed and an avenue sketched for treatment of various neurological disorders, such as tinnitus and addiction.

Additional information ...

IEEE Distinguished Lecturer talk Wouter A. Serdijn

  • Monday, 19 May 2014
  • 13:00-14:30
  • University of Bologna

Circuits and Systems for Electroceuticals

Wouter Serdijn
Delft University of Technology

In the design process of electroceuticals, such as hearing instruments, pacemakers, cochlear implants and neurostimulators, the tradeoff between performance and power consumption is a delicate balancing act. In this presentation I will cover techniques to deal with the acquisition and generation of electrophysiological signals and to provide reliable communication with and through the body.

We will discuss signal-specific analog-to-digital converters, morphological filters, arbitrary-waveform neurostimulators, energy harvesting and ultra wideband wireless communication from a low-power circuits and system perspective. Design examples and their performance will be discussed and an avenue sketched for treatment of various neurological disorders, such as tinnitus and addiction.

Additional information ...

Lecture on wearable and implantable medical devices

  • Friday, 16 May 2014
  • 10:45-12:30
  • EWI Lecture Room G

Lecture on wearable and implantable medical devices

Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn will present a lecture on wearable and implantable medical device electronics

Additional information ...

BME Literature Review

  • Wednesday, 14 May 2014
  • 16:00-17:00
  • EWI HB17.150

Left Ventricular Assist Devices: how to prevent thrombae

Arundhati Radhakrishnan
Delft University of Technology and Erasmus Medical Center

Arundhati Radhakrishnan will present her literature review as part of the requirements for the MSc Biomedical Engineering studies

Lecture on ExG signal acquisition and processing electronics

  • Wednesday, 14 May 2014
  • 13:45-15:30
  • EWI Lecture Room G

Lecture on ExG signal acquisition and processing electronics

Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn will present the BELEM lecture on ExG signal acquisition and processing electronics

Additional information ...