Title: Smart Brain Interfaces for diagnostic and subsequent treatments
Speaker: Prof. Mohamad Sawan (Montreal Polytechnique University, Canada)
Host: Prof. Guoyong SHI
Time: 10:00-11:00am, September 29, 2011
Room: Room 104 (Building of School of Microelectronics )
Abstract:
This talk covers various smart brain wearable and implantable interfaces dedicated for biosensing and subsequent treatment of intracortical neural dysfunctions. These microscale devices are promising alternatives for studying and recovering brain activities underlying cognitive functions and pathologies. In particular, circuits and systems techniques used for design and implementation of epileptic multichannel seizure onset detector, real-time processing and electrical cortical stimulator, will be presented. Such dedicated cortical system includes two types of devices: 1) Wearable composed of Near Infra-Red Spectrometer (NIRS) combined with EEG used to locate the epileptic foci, and it is remotely link to a base station for real-time data processing. This wearable device uses battery to deliver needed high-voltage source to power up the whole system including its light emitters, and 2) Miniaturized implantable intended to monitor seizure activities and to stop them onset. The epileptic implant harvests needed energy through inductive link and uses it to power-up and to bidirectionally exchange data with an external base station. Global view of typical biochips altogether with corresponding multidimensional design, power management, test and assembly challenges will be described. Also, neural-cells based diagnostic devices using lab-on chip structure dedicated for neurotransmitters manipulation and characterization will be presented.
Biography:
Mohamad Sawan received the Ph.D. degree in 1990 in electrical engineering, from Sherbrooke University, Canada. He joined Polytechnique Montreal in 1991, where he is currently a Professor of Microelectronics and Biomedical Engineering. His scientific interests are oriented toward the design, integration, assembly and validation of various types of Microsystems dedicated to biomedical applications.
Dr. Sawan is a holder of a Canada Research Chair in Smart Medical Devices. He is founder director of the Polystim Neurotechnologies Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal, and he is leading the Microsystems Strategic Alliance of Quebec (ReSMiQ) receiving membership support from 10 Canadian Universities.
He is founder / co-founder of several International conferences such as NEWCAS, BiOCAS, and ICECS, and he is Deputy Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, Associate Editor of several Journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems and the International Journal in Circuit Theory and Applications. Dr. Sawan published more than 500 papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and he was awarded 10 patents pertaining to the field of biomedical sensors and actuators.
Dr. Sawan received several prestigious awards; the most important of them are the Bombardier Award for technology transfer, the Barbara Turnbull Award for medical research in Canada, the achievement Award from the American University of Science and Technology, and the Medal of Honor from the President of Lebanon. Dr. Sawan is Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and Officer of the Quebec’s National Order.