IEEE Photonics Society Boston Chapter

Prof. Sameer Sonkusale Tufts UniversityThe speaker will introduce a new paradigm of "Human in the loop" precision medicine, made possible by advances in flexible sensors, optics, microfluidics, drug delivery, and electronics. The closed loop approach is expected to be more effective in improving the health outcomes of individuals across broad demographics, as opposed to the current open-loop one-size-fits-all approach to medicine. The presentation will draw on examples from the speaker's own interdisciplinary research projects. For instance, the speaker will showcase a novel toolkit of sensors, microfluidics, electronics, and drug delivery, all integrated onto a surgical suture, which realizes the vision of tissue-embedded diagnostics. Even electronic transistors and integrated circuits can be created on a single thread, giving rise to "free-form three dimensional integrated circuits." The use of textile threads offers unique advantages such as wide availability, affordability, versatility of materials, and easy textile-based processing. The talk will also feature a project that employs additive manufacturing and laser micromachining to develop smart lab-on-a-pill devices that can spatially sample the gut microbiome in vivo. These ingestible pills have the potential to capture the spatial microbial biogeography of the gut, providing valuable insights into host-microbiome interactions and opening up a new realm of ingestible diagnostics compared to traditional fecal analysis. The talk will conclude with a forward-looking perspective on the field of bioelectronics and the exciting possibilities it holds. More importantly, it will showcase knowledge gaps and how the biomedical circuits and systems community can help address those in near term and long term.Sameer Sonkusale is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University, where he holds joint appointments in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical and Biological Engineering. He also served as a visiting professor at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital of the Harvard Medical School during 2011-2012 and 2018-2019, respectively. In 2012-2013, Dr. Sonkusale also served as the Associate Dean of Graduate Education in the School of Engineering at Tufts University. He currently directs an interdisciplinary research group, the Nano Lab, which focuses on developing new devices and systems for healthcare, biology, life sciences, and the environment. Dr. Sonkusale is a prolific inventor of several biomedical devices, including "smart bandages," "smart sutures," and "lab-on-a-pill." His innovation on "lab-on-a-pill" was listed as one of the top eight biomedical innovations in the world for the year 2020 in the STAT Madness challenge. The technologies developed in his lab have been licensed to several companies and have resulted in the creation of venture backed startup companies. Dr. Sonkusale earned his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and has received several awards, including the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2010. He was also honored with a Distinguished Alumni award from his alma mater, BITS Pilani. He is Radha K Maheshwari Distinguished Lecturers at USU in 2023, and IEEE CAS Distinguished Lecturer in 2024-2025. Dr. Sonkusale is also an alumnus of the National Academy of Engineering US Frontiers of Engineering meeting in 2015, and the National Academy of Sciences Arab-America Frontiers meeting in 2014 and 2016. Dr. Sonkusale serves on the editorial boards of several prominent journals, including Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, PLoS One, and Electronic Letters. He is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of OSA, MRS, BMES, and AAAS. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/482236

Anish K. Goyal Block EngineeringThe detection and identification of trace chemicals on surfaces is of great interest for a variety of civilian and security applications. Sensitive techniques for trace surface detection already exist, but these usually require the physical transfer of chemicals from the surface of interest into the instrument. In some cases, however, it is desirable that detection occur in a standoff configuration and be non-destructive. Furthermore, it is often desirable to rapidly scan the surface and to map the chemical contamination with high spatial resolution. Laser-based, long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imaging has been shown to be capable of addressing many of the requirements that are important to end users. These include the ability to engineer hand-portable systems that are eye-safe (class 1), provide high sensitivity detection (micrograms/cm 2 ), operate at modest standoff distances (<1m to >10m), and achieve high areal coverage rates (potentially >100 cm 2 /s). Wavelength-tunable quantum-cascade lasers (operating wavelength about = 7.5 – 12 um) are used to illuminate the surface of interest and a camera captures the diffusely reflected light. The laser wavelength is tuned synchronously with the camera such that reflectance of the surface in the form of a hyperspectral image cube (hypercube) in which each pixel represents the reflection spectrum of a single point on the surface. The unique spectral signature of chemicals can be detected with high sensitivity because of the very large absorption cross-sections for most chemicals in the LWIR. Over the past 15 years, this technology has matured from initial feasibility demonstration (at MIT/LL) and then through the development of a series of prototypes under funding from IARPA, DoD, and DHS. It is currently on the cusp of being commercialized. In this talk, we will discuss the underlying technology, performance limits, and present examples of various applications.Anish Goyal is the Vice President of Technology at Block Engineering. Responsibilities include the advancing of Block’s chemical detection products and the external-cavity quantum cascade lasers on which these products are based. Prior to joining Block, he was a member of the Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Laser Technology and Applications Group. His academic background is in Electrical Engineering, receiving a B.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.Register for this event.

Dr. Jonathan M. Richardson MIT Lincoln LaboratoryFunctional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) have shown promise as non-invasive optical methods for cerebral functional imaging. Both approaches currently have limits to sensitivity in adults. Sensitivity can be improved using temporal discrimination, where the laser excitation is of short (~400ps) duration and the detector rejects early photons that have not penetrated into the brain while maintaining high sensitivity to those that have. We report here the development of a novel Read-Out Integrated Circuit (ROIC) that integrates with a 32x32 Single-Photon Avalanche Photo-Detector (SPAD) array that can be either silicon (Si, for visible to infrared) or indium-phosphide (InP, to allow operation at 1064µm). The ROIC is designed to arm the SPADs in less than 500ps synchronous with the excitation pulse, keeping the total detection window as short as 3ns of arming to minimize sensitivity to dark events (thermal and discharge-related). The entire array can be operated at a frame rate of at least ~10MHz, giving a full “firemap” of which pixels have had events for each frame. Data is exfiltrated serially directly to an FPGA where it can be processed in real time. This presentation will include results of recent detector performance tests and phantom demonstrations using this powerful new tool.Dr. Jonathan M. Richardson is a member of the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Advanced Imaging group. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has most recently worked in the areas of medical imaging and climate science.Register for this event.