Soft, Biocompatible Optoelectronic Neural Interfaces

Oct 26, 2021 Advanced optoelectronic systems that can intimately integrate with the brain and the peripheral nervous system have the potential to accelerate progress in neuroscience research and enable new approaches in patient care. Specifically, capabilities for injecting electronics, light sources, photodetectors, multiplexed sensors, programmable microfluidic networks, and other components into precise locations of the deep brain and for softly laminating them onto targeted regions of the surfaces of the brain or the peripheral nerves will open up unique and important opportunities in stimulation, inhibition, and real-time monitoring of neural circuits. John A. Rogers describes foundational concepts in materials science and assembly processes for these types of technologies in 1D, 2D, and 3D architectures. Examples in system-level demonstrations include "cellular-scale," injectable optofluidic neural probes for behavioral research on animal models, 3D mesoscale networks for study of neural signal propagation in organoids, and closed-loop, wireless systems for optogenetic control of bladder function.

***This presentation premiered during the 2021 BioPhotonics Conference. For more information on Photonics Media conferences, visit events.photonics.com. 

About the presenter:
John A. Rogers obtained bachelor's degrees in physics and chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. He received Master of Science degrees in physics and chemistry in 1992 and a doctoral degree in physical chemistry in 1995, all from MIT. From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a junior fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows. In 1997, he joined Bell Laboratories as a member of technical staff in the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department, and he served as director of this department from the end of 2000 to 2002. He then spent 13 years at the University of Illinois, most recently as the Swanlund Chair Professor and director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In the fall of 2016, Rogers joined Northwestern University as the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Medicine, with affiliate appointments in the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Chemistry. He is also the director of the recently endowed Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. Rogers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.