Advanced electronic/optoelectronic technologies designed to allow stable, intimate integration with living organisms will accelerate progress in biomedical research; they will also serve as the foundations for new approaches in monitoring patients and treating diseases. Specifically, capabilities for injecting miniaturized, biocompatible electronic systems and other components into soft tissues or for softly laminating them onto the surfaces of vital organs will create unique and important opportunities in tracking and manipulating biological activity, with broad implications in human healthcare.
John A. Rogers,
Northwestern University
This presentation describes the core concepts in materials science, circuit design and manufacturing that underpin these types of technologies, including bioresorbable, or ‘transient’, devices engineered to disappear into the body on timescales matched to natural processes. The content will include examples of highly interdisciplinary research in this area – featuring academic and translational work in skin-like wireless devices for tracking vital signs and bioelectronic ‘medicines’ for neuroregeneration and temporary cardiac pacing.
Professor John A. Rogers obtained BA and BS degrees in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1989. From MIT, he received SM degrees in physics and in chemistry in 1992 and a PhD degree in physical chemistry in 1995. From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows. He joined Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in 1997 and served as Director of the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department from 2000 to 2002. He then spent thirteen years on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, finally as the Swanlund Chair Professor and Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In the Fall of 2016, he joined the faculty at Northwestern University where he is Director of the Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. He has published ~1000 papers and he is co-inventor on ~100 patents, >70 of which are licensed and in active use. More than 150 former members of his group are now in faculty positions at research universities around the world. His research has been recognized by many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), the James Prize (2022) and the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award (2024). He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, of Sciences, of Medicine and of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society.