Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao directs the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) and the Taiwan Science and Technology Hub @ Stanford. She is a CZ Biohub investigator since 2022 and an Arc Institute Innovation Investigator since 2023.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995.  She has more than 700 refereed publications and over 80 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 206 and is one of the world’s most highly cited scholars in the fields of chemistry and material science. She is one of the Clarivate Citation Laureates in Chemistry for her pioneering work on skin-inspired electronics.

Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Science. She has been serving on the Board of Directors of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and scientific affair committee from 2022. She is an advisor for the Science for America, a solutions incubator to address urgent challenges, driven by an unprecedented alliance of leading philanthropic organizations.

Bao is a recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2022, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, Gibbs Medal 2020, Wilhelm Exner Medal2018, ACS Award on Applied Polymer Science 2017, L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award 2017.

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. Research inventions from her group have been licensed and are foundational technologies of multiple start-ups founded by her students. Bao serves as an advisor for Fusion Venture and Boutique Venture.

Xiang Qian, MD, PhD, is a Pain Management Physician and Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University. He is also the inaugural Stanford Medicine Endowed Director.

Dr. Qian is highly respected for his work on developing novel therapies for various chronic pain conditions, and he lectures internationally for those work and topics. Dr. Qian’s clinical interests include the treatment of acute and chronic pain, with special interest in migraine, headache, trigeminal neuralgia, glossopharyngeal neuralgia, hemifacial spasm, atypical facial pain, cancer pain, back pain, joint pain, nerve pain, and others. At Stanford, Dr. Qian developed many advanced surgical and interventional technologies for his patients, and he currently leads the CT-guided interventional pain program and is the recipient of Translational and Clinical Innovation Award at Stanford.

With his deep interest in clinical innovation and translational medicine, Dr. Qian is the faculty professor of Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR) and has been working with colleagues from engineering school to develop mini implantable nerve stimulator, powered by wireless energy. Similar to a pacemaker for the heart, nerve stimulators are modulators for the nerves.

Due to his passion for global health and leadership experience, Dr. Qian was appointed as the Medical Director of Stanford International Medical Services (IMS) since 2016, where he has been working in collaboration with faculty members from all subspecialties and hospital administrations to help deliver care for international patients and promote international collaborations. His vision is to help Stanford become the leader in international medicine by providing its physicians and faculty the opportunities to expand their practice internationally and spread knowledge globally.

Dr. Qian completed his residency and fellowship training at Stanford. Prior to that, he received his PhD degree in Physiology and Biophysics from University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and went through Postdoc fellowship training in Neuroscience at UCSF. Outside of the work he does at Stanford, Dr. Qian founded the Chinese American Physicians’ Society to foster his efforts in bringing medical knowledge internationally. Today, the society has more than 600 physician members from 50 states of the US, across over 38 different subspecialties.

In his free time, Dr. Qian enjoys reading, running, hiking and exploring the mountains and beaches of Northern California.

Sleep is an opportunity for data scientists and physiological monitoring.  During sleep, we go through a pre-programed 90 min cycle that is uncontaminated by the activities of the day.   As such, it is an ideal moment for monitoring physiology and looking at the interaction of organ health with each other and with sleep, not to mention evaluate for the presence of sleep disorders.   Sleep is also data rich.   Every night, millions of individuals are recorded either using sophisticated full blown nocturnal Polysomnography (PSG: EEGs, EOG, EMG, ECG, breathing) and hundreds of millions use simpler commercial devices measuring pulse and locomotor activity.   Our increased ability to monitor and to analyze these data also coincide with a biological revolution, notably in genetics, proteomics and metabolomics. At the biological level, sleep is regulated by an endogenous 24 biological clock and is reactive to sleep deprivation.   Whereas much is known regarding the molecular mechanisms regulating the endogenous circadian clock, almost nothing is known regarding sleep homeostasis.   One pathway of entry to these mechanisms is genetics, because it is causal; proteomics and metabolomics may provide better markers, however. We have been assembling large datasets crossing  various modalities, including 500,000 PSGs with health care information, actigraphy datasets, proteomics, and genetic typing.  An important advantage of crossing modalities is the possibility of looking at causality and a reduction of false positive, inherent to any single modality.  Although these modalities are not yet all assembled in a single model, we already created a foundation model for PSG and found that it contains information that is able, notably when using contrastive learning, to predict various health outcomes.  A foundation model for actigraphy was also created and predicts daytime behavior and sleep stages, opening the door to its use in the UK biobank to correlate objective sleep with genetic data.  

Emmanuel Mignot is the Craig Reynolds Professor of Sleep Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy. He is recognized as having discovered the cause of narcolepsy. Dr. Mignot was born In Paris, France, and he is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure (Ulm, Paris, France). He received his M.D. and Ph.D. (molecular pharmacology) from Paris V and VI University respectively. He practiced medicine and Psychiatry in France for several years before serving as a visiting scholar at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Center. He joined as faculty and Director of the Center for Narcolepsy in 1993. He was named Professor of Psychiatry in 2001. He has received numerous awards for his work, including a 2023 Breakthrough prize in Life Sciences and is a member of both the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine.

Dr. Mignot positionally cloned a mutation in the dog causing narcolepsy (hypocretin/orexin receptor 2) and discovered that narcolepsy, affecting 1/2000 people, is caused by an immune-mediated destruction of 70,000 hypocretin/orexin neurons in the hypothalamus, also revealing hypocretins as a novel critical sleep-regulatory pathway. Most of his current research focuses on the neurobiology, genetics and immunology of narcolepsy, with indirect interest in the neuroimmunology of other brain disorders such as autoimmune encephalitis or neurological paraneoplastic syndromes.

His laboratory also uses state of the art human genetics, proteomics and immunology techniques, such as genome-wide association, exome or whole genome sequencing or large scale proteomics in the study of human sleep and sleep disorders, with parallel studies in animal models. His laboratory is lastly interested in web-based assessments of sleep disorders, and conducts deep learning-based processing of polysomnography (PSG), and outcome research.

Modern science advances fastest when thought meets action. LabOS represents the first AI co-scientist that unites computational reasoning with physical experimentation through multimodal perception, self-evolving agents, and XR-enabled human-AI collaboration. By connecting multi-model AI agents, smart glasses, and human-AI collaboration, LabOS allows AI to see what scientists see, understand experimental context, and assist in real-time execution. Across applications—from cancer immunotherapy target discovery to cell engineering— LabOS shows that AI can move beyond computational design to participation, turning the laboratory into an intelligent, collaborative environment where human and machine discovery evolve together.

Dr. Cong’s group is developing technology for large-scale genome editing and gene insertion for gene&cell therapy, integrating advance from metagenomics, computational biology, and high-throughput engineering. In parallel, the group also leverages these gene-editing tools for single-cell functional screening, to probe the molecular mechanisms of innate immunity in cancer and neuro-immune diseases. To accelerate these efforts, Dr. Cong’s team integrates AI and machine learning into genome technologies, to design and evolve gene-editing proteins and RNAs in silico, significantly enhancing the efficiency and capabilities of these therapeutic molecules.

Dr. Cong’s work has led to one of the first CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tools for in vivo gene therapy. More recently, his group invented tools for cleavage-free large gene insertion with novel recombination proteins (SSAP editor), and developed machine-learning optimized single-cell methods (DAISY) for studying cancer and immune diseases. Dr. Cong is a recipient of the NHGRI Genomic Innovator Award, Baxter Foundation Faculty Scholar, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN) Top 10 Under 40, Clinical OMICs Pioneers Under 40, and Clarivate Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher.

Achieving human-level robotic dexterity requires systems that can see, reason about, and feel the physical world. In this talk, I will present our recent advances in physically-grounded and contact-aware perception and manipulation. I first introduce a framework that integrates physics simulation with generative video models to synthesize action-conditioned dynamic 3D scenes from a single image across diverse materials. I then discuss a conformable, high-coverage electronic skin that provides the sensitive tactile feedback essential for learning contact-rich manipulation tasks. Together, these works demonstrate how combining physics-based priors with multimodal sensing enables agents to interact with the physical world with unprecedented fidelity and robustness.

Jiajun Wu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and, by courtesy, of Psychology at Stanford University, working on computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and computational cognitive science. Before joining Stanford, he was a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google Research. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wu’s research has been recognized through the Young Investigator Programs (YIP) by ONR and by AFOSR, the NSF CAREER award, the Okawa research grant, the AI’s 10 to Watch by IEEE Intelligent Systems, paper awards and finalists at ICCV, CVPR, SIGGRAPH Asia, ICRA, CoRL, and IROS, dissertation awards from ACM, AAAI, and MIT, the 2020 Samsung AI Researcher of the Year, and faculty research awards from Google, J.P. Morgan, Samsung, Amazon, and Meta.

Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao directs the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) and the Taiwan Science and Technology Hub @ Stanford. She is a CZ Biohub investigator since 2022 and an Arc Institute Innovation Investigator since 2023.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995.  She has more than 700 refereed publications and over 80 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 206 and is one of the world’s most highly cited scholars in the fields of chemistry and material science. She is one of the Clarivate Citation Laureates in Chemistry for her pioneering work on skin-inspired electronics.

Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Science. She has been serving on the Board of Directors of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and scientific affair committee from 2022. She is an advisor for the Science for America, a solutions incubator to address urgent challenges, driven by an unprecedented alliance of leading philanthropic organizations.

Bao is a recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2022, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, Gibbs Medal 2020, Wilhelm Exner Medal2018, ACS Award on Applied Polymer Science 2017, L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award 2017.

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. Research inventions from her group have been licensed and are foundational technologies of multiple start-ups founded by her students. Bao serves as an advisor for Fusion Venture and Boutique Venture.

In this talk, I will present our recent developments and applications of soft electronic sensors for neurochemicals, single neuron electrical recording and electrical stimulation.

Xiang Qian, MD, PhD, is a Pain Management Physician and Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University. He is also the inaugural Stanford Medicine Endowed Director.

Dr. Qian is highly respected for his work on developing novel therapies for various chronic pain conditions, and he lectures internationally for those work and topics. Dr. Qian’s clinical interests include the treatment of acute and chronic pain, with special interest in migraine, headache, trigeminal neuralgia, glossopharyngeal neuralgia, hemifacial spasm, atypical facial pain, cancer pain, back pain, joint pain, nerve pain, and others. At Stanford, Dr. Qian developed many advanced surgical and interventional technologies for his patients, and he currently leads the CT-guided interventional pain program and is the recipient of Translational and Clinical Innovation Award at Stanford.

With his deep interest in clinical innovation and translational medicine, Dr. Qian is the faculty professor of Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR) and has been working with colleagues from engineering school to develop mini implantable nerve stimulator, powered by wireless energy. Similar to a pacemaker for the heart, nerve stimulators are modulators for the nerves.

Due to his passion for global health and leadership experience, Dr. Qian was appointed as the Medical Director of Stanford International Medical Services (IMS) since 2016, where he has been working in collaboration with faculty members from all subspecialties and hospital administrations to help deliver care for international patients and promote international collaborations. His vision is to help Stanford become the leader in international medicine by providing its physicians and faculty the opportunities to expand their practice internationally and spread knowledge globally.

Dr. Qian completed his residency and fellowship training at Stanford. Prior to that, he received his PhD degree in Physiology and Biophysics from University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and went through Postdoc fellowship training in Neuroscience at UCSF. Outside of the work he does at Stanford, Dr. Qian founded the Chinese American Physicians’ Society to foster his efforts in bringing medical knowledge internationally. Today, the society has more than 600 physician members from 50 states of the US, across over 38 different subspecialties.

In his free time, Dr. Qian enjoys reading, running, hiking and exploring the mountains and beaches of Northern California.

Chrissy and her husband created the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute in 2016 with a commitment to help advance brain science.

The organization’s vision is to improve the human experience by understanding how our brains perceive, learn, and interact with the world.

Chrissy was a co-founder of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Group in 1999, which has been credited with pioneering the online game and online literature industries in China. Now Shanda Group, the couple’s family office, Chrissy oversees company-wide operations. Prior to Shanda, Chrissy was an investment banker.

Chrissy has a Bachelor of Economics degree from the China Institute of Finance (now part of the University of International Business and Economics).

Michael Snyder is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine. He received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. Dr. Snyder has pioneered the use of “big data” and multiomics to advance scientific discovery and transform healthcare. His laboratory has invented many technologies that are widely used in medicine and research, including methods for characterizing genomes and their products (e.g. RNA-Seq, NGS paired end sequencing, ChIP-Chip and later Chip-Seq, protein arrays, machine learning for disease gene discovery). His application of omics and wearables technologies to perform longitudinal profiling of people when they are healthy and ill is transforming medicine and healthcare. Indeed, his laboratory’s recent work to use smartwatches and wearables to detect illness, including infectious disease such as COVID-19, prior to symptom onset is being used by many thousands of people.

Wearables enable tracking health in real time. We have demonstrated that smart watches can be used for detecting illness prior to symptom onset and continuous glucose monitoring can be used for identifying diabetes subtypes and managing glucose levels. Together these technologies can be used to transform healthcare through continuous health monitoring.

Oussama’s research in robotics focuses on novel control architectures, algorithms, sensing, and human-friendly designs for advanced capabilities in complex environments. With an emphasis on enabling robots to interact cooperatively and safely with humans and the physical world, these studies bring understanding of human movement for therapy, athletic training, and performance enhancement. This work on understanding human cognitive task representation and physical skills is enabling transfer for increased robot autonomy. With these core capabilities, we are exploring applications in healthcare and wellness, industry and service, farms and smart cities, and dangerous and unreachable settings – deep in oceans, mines, and space.

Coming Soon

Jaimie Henderson, M.D. is director of the Stanford program in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, and director of the Stanford Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory (NPTL). His research interests encompass several areas of stereotactic and functional neurosurgery, including frameless stereotactic approaches for therapy delivery to deep brain nuclei; mechanisms of action of deep brain stimulation; cortical physiology and its relationship to normal and pathological movement; neural prostheses; and the development of novel neuromodulatory techniques for the treatment of neurological diseases.

Intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCIs) have shown promise in restoring function to people with neurological diseases and injuries. Recent demonstrations include control of computer cursors and robotic limbs, as well as high-performance decoding of complex movements such as handwriting and speech. This lecture will discuss recent advances in iBCIs, focusing on restoration of communication and motor function for people with paralysis, as well as exploring their role in reshaping our understanding of the motor cortex. Contrary to the conventional homuncular model, recent findings suggest a nuanced organization within the precentral gyrus, with intermixed representations of upper and lower extremity movements as well as syllables, words and movement sequences. Discussion will focus on how scientific and engineering insights can help guide continued progress in understanding brain function and designing high performance assistive devices for restoration of neurological function.

Jennifer Widom is the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and the Fletcher Jones Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She served as Computer Science Department Chair from 2009-2014 and School of Engineering Senior Associate Dean from 2014-2016. Jennifer received her Bachelor’s degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 1982 and her Computer Science Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1987. She was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center before joining the Stanford faculty in 1993. Her research interests span many aspects of nontraditional data management. She is an ACM Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 2007, the ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award in 2015, and the EPFL-WISH Foundation Erna Hamburger Prize in 2018. 

The Spakowitz lab is engaged in projects that address fundamental chemical and physical phenomena underlying a range of biological processes and soft-material applications. Current research in our lab focuses on four main research themes: chromosomal organization and dynamics, protein self-assembly, polymer membranes, and charge transport in conducting polymers. These broad research areas offer complementary perspectives on chemical and physical processes, and we leverage this complementarity throughout our research. Our approach draws from a diverse range of theoretical and computational methods, including analytical theory of semiflexible polymers, polymer field theory, continuum elastic mechanics, Brownian dynamics simulation, equilibrium and dynamic Monte Carlo simulations, and analytical theory and numerical simulations of reaction-diffusion phenomena. A common thread in our work is the need to capture phenomena over many length and time scales, and our flexibility in research methodologies provides us with the critical tools to address these complex multidisciplinary problems.

Professor Horowitz initially focused on designing high-performance digital systems by combining work in computer-aided design tools, circuit design, and system architecture. During this time, he built a number of early RISC microprocessors, and contributed to the design of early distributed shared memory multiprocessors. In 1990, Dr. Horowitz took leave from Stanford to help start Rambus Inc., a company designing high-bandwidth memory interface technology. After returning in 1991, his research group pioneered many innovations in high-speed link design, and many of today’s high speed link designs are designed by his former students or colleagues from Rambus.

In the 2000s he started a long collaboration with Prof. Levoy on computational photography, which included work that led to the Lytro camera, whose photographs could be refocused after they were captured.. Dr. Horowitz’s current research interests are quite broad and span using EE and CS analysis methods to problems in neuro and molecular biology to creating new agile design methodologies for analog and digital VLSI circuits. He remains interested in learning new things, and building interdisciplinary teams.

Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao directs the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) and the Taiwan Science and Technology Hub @ Stanford. She is a CZ Biohub investigator since 2022 and an Arc Institute Innovation Investigator since 2023.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995.  She has more than 700 refereed publications and over 80 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 206 and is one of the world’s most highly cited scholars in the fields of chemistry and material science. She is one of the Clarivate Citation Laureates in Chemistry for her pioneering work on skin-inspired electronics.

Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Science. She has been serving on the Board of Directors of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and scientific affair committee from 2022. She is an advisor for the Science for America, a solutions incubator to address urgent challenges, driven by an unprecedented alliance of leading philanthropic organizations.

Bao is a recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2022, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, Gibbs Medal 2020, Wilhelm Exner Medal2018, ACS Award on Applied Polymer Science 2017, L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award 2017.

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. Research inventions from her group have been licensed and are foundational technologies of multiple start-ups founded by her students. Bao serves as an advisor for Fusion Venture and Boutique Venture.

In this talk, I will present our recent developments and applications of soft electronic sensors for neurochemicals, single neuron electrical recording and electrical stimulation.

Dr. Shinozaki is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University. Completed psychiatry residency and psychosomatic medicine fellowship at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. His research interests include: a novel EEG (bispectral EEG: BSEEG) algorithm/device development for the detection of delirium and prediction of patient outcomes, epigenetic investigation of delirium pathophysiology and biomarker development, and development of novel therapeutics using a novel BSEEG mouse model of delirium. Before joining Stanford, he worked closely with Dr. Jimmy Potash, current chair of Hopkins Psychiatry, who mentored him for NIMH K23. He is currently conducting an epigenetic research study funded by NIMH R01 as well as a clinical study for a novel EEG device to screen delirium and predict patient outcomes. His invention of bispectral EEG (BSEEG) methods for the prediction of patient outcomes has been validated over 1,000 subjects with numerous peer-reviewed publications over the last several years. He received numerous awards including the 2018 Dlin/Fischer Clinical Research Award, the 2019 Visiting Professorship Award, as well as most recently 2023 Wayne Katon Research Award from the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry for his innovative work on the development of a point-of-care EEG (BSEEG) method to screen delirium and predict patient outcomes.

Delirium screening has been largely dependent on instruments, such as Delirium Rating Scale (DRS) or Confusion Assessment Method (CAM). However, in a practical setting, those tools have not been consistently implemented. Although EEG has been well known to be useful in detecting delirium, its use is often practically limited for neurology specialists. Simplified EEG has been, however, used in different specialties to guide specific procedures. One is with anesthesia to monitor the depth of sedation. Another is with ECT to monitor seizure duration. We developed a novel BSEEG device and algorithm for delirium detection and outcome prediction. The BSEEG method has been validated in over 1,000 patients. The demo of the new thumb-size BSEEG device with the iPhone app will be introduced at the presentation.

Xiang Qian, MD, PhD, is a Pain Management Physician and Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University. He is also the inaugural Stanford Medicine Endowed Director.

Dr. Qian is highly respected for his work on developing novel therapies for various chronic pain conditions, and he lectures internationally for those work and topics. Dr. Qian’s clinical interests include the treatment of acute and chronic pain, with special interest in migraine, headache, trigeminal neuralgia, glossopharyngeal neuralgia, hemifacial spasm, atypical facial pain, cancer pain, back pain, joint pain, nerve pain, and others. At Stanford, Dr. Qian developed many advanced surgical and interventional technologies for his patients, and he currently leads the CT-guided interventional pain program and is the recipient of Translational and Clinical Innovation Award at Stanford.

With his deep interest in clinical innovation and translational medicine, Dr. Qian is the faculty professor of Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR) and has been working with colleagues from engineering school to develop mini implantable nerve stimulator, powered by wireless energy. Similar to a pacemaker for the heart, nerve stimulators are modulators for the nerves.

Due to his passion for global health and leadership experience, Dr. Qian was appointed as the Medical Director of Stanford International Medical Services (IMS) since 2016, where he has been working in collaboration with faculty members from all subspecialties and hospital administrations to help deliver care for international patients and promote international collaborations. His vision is to help Stanford become the leader in international medicine by providing its physicians and faculty the opportunities to expand their practice internationally and spread knowledge globally.

Dr. Qian completed his residency and fellowship training at Stanford. Prior to that, he received his PhD degree in Physiology and Biophysics from University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and went through Postdoc fellowship training in Neuroscience at UCSF. Outside of the work he does at Stanford, Dr. Qian founded the Chinese American Physicians’ Society to foster his efforts in bringing medical knowledge internationally. Today, the society has more than 600 physician members from 50 states of the US, across over 38 different subspecialties.

In his free time, Dr. Qian enjoys reading, running, hiking and exploring the mountains and beaches of Northern California.

Coming Soon.

Ada received her Ph.D. degree from the EECS department at the University of California at Berkeley. Upon graduation, she spent some time in industries, working at Intel and SiBeam. Afterwards, she returned to academic and joined the faculty of the ECE department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Since then, she has changed her research direction from wireless communications to integrated biomedical systems. In 2008, she joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She is a Terman Fellow at Stanford University. She received the Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2010 and NSF CAREER Award in 2013. She was a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator.

Wireless passive sensors, being battery-free and simple, are suitable for disposable uses across various applications, from tracking food, monitoring the environment, to clinical diagnostics. However, their utilization is hampered by the complexity of existing readout techniques and the absence of memory functionality within the sensor. Here, we present a reader technique that can automatically lock to the sensor value wirelessly through inductive coupling, thus significantly reducing the reader complexity. By integrating a high-frequency audio link and wireless powering, we demonstrate a battery-free and flexible reader that paves the way for disposable solutions. We proceed to employ this reader for wireless temperature logging from a passive non-volatile thermistor sensor. This sensor logs temperature data based on the irreversible geometric change of low-melting-point metal during phase transitions, resulting in non-volatile resistance change. As a whole, these results establish the feasibility of a simplistic reader and a passive non-volatile thermistor sensor, opening up new possibilities for disposable and ubiquitous temperature monitoring, as well as a range of other applications.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, bestselling author, and Guggenheim Fellow. Dr. Eagleman’s areas of research include sensory substitution, time perception, vision, and synesthesia. He also studies the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system, and in that capacity he directs the Center for Science and Law. Eagleman is the writer and presenter of The Brain, an Emmy-nominated television series on PBS and BBC. He is the author of 8 books, including Livewired, The Runaway Species, The Brain, Incognito, and Wednesday is Indigo Blue. He is also the author of a widely adopted textbook on cognitive neuroscience, Brain and Behavior. His internationally bestselling book of literary fiction, SUM, has been translated into 32 languages, turned into two operas, and named a Best Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble. Dr. Eagleman has been a TED speaker, a guest on the Colbert Report, and profiled in the New Yorker magazine. He has launched several neuroscience companies from his research, including Neosensory and BrainCheck.

Can we expand our senses beyond the capacities that we come to the table with? To this end, our research feeds sensory signals to the brain through atypical sensory pathways. For example, we can address the limitations of deafness by turning auditory information into a series of vibrating patterns on the skin. This is done via the Neosensory wristband, which puts independently vibrating motors around the wrist. The wristband also reaches beyond hearing loss: we’re using it to feed in all kinds of information streams, from infrared to olfactory information to the stock market. Using this approach of sensory substitution, we can translate and feed almost any kind of data through the skin – thus expanding the human sensory experience.

Dr. Kapur is the Head of Digital Biomarkers at Verily Life Sciences, an Alphabet company focused on precision health. She is responsible for Verily’s precision measures strategy for smartphone and wearable sensor data and leads a team of over 80 scientists, engineers, and operations professionals. She manages a portfolio of R&D and commercial programs that use wearable and passive sensing technologies to better diagnose, monitor, and treat disease. 

Dr. Kapur is a Neuroscientist with over 15 years of experience in evidence generation, medical device development, neuromodulation, and signal processing. Her focus is on using traditional and machine learning methods to extract clinically relevant information from implanted and wearable sensors, building a base of evidence for their usefulness and validity, and making these technologies available to serve the needs of people living with disease. She is also a Visiting Full Professor by Special Appointment at the Radboud University Medical Center Department of Neurology.

Prior to joining Verily, Dr. Kapur was a Senior Clinical Research Scientist at NeuroPace, and part of the team that successfully completed a PMA for the world’s first brain-responsive neurostimulator for the treatment of epilepsy. Dr. Kapur received a Doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, where she specialized in signal processing and awake behaving electrophysiology. She also graduated from Stanford in 1998, with a degree in Human Biology.

Dr. Daniel Kraft is a Stanford & Harvard trained physician-scientist, entrepreneur & investor. He has served as faculty chair of medicine and neuroscience for Singularity University since its inception, and is chair of the XPRIZE Pandemic & Health Alliance.  

He is founder of NextMed Health, a program that explores accelerating technologies & the future of medicine and Digital.Health, a platform enabling discovery and use of digital medicine solutions. Daniel is a partner with Continuum Health Ventures funding early stage digital health & longevity startups.

Following undergraduate degrees from Brown University and medical school at Stanford, Daniel was Board Certified in both Internal Medicine & Pediatrics after completing a Harvard residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital & fellowships in hematology, oncology, & stem cell transplantation at Stanford.  He has published in Nature and Science through faculty positions at Stanford and UCSF. 

Daniel is a member of the Inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellowship & is member of the Kaufman Fellows Society. He has given 4TEDTalks. An avid pilot, he served as a flight surgeon in F-15 & F-16 squadrons and was a finalist for NASA Astronaut selection.

Paul is the Head of Smart Devices at Roche / Genentech. Paul has 20+ years of experience in medical device R&D, strategic marketing, product management, clinical research, and medical informatics.

Prior to Roche / Genentech, Paul was with Becton Dickinson(BD), as Worldwide Director of Strategic Marketing in their Pharmaceutical Systems business.

Paul was also the head of Product at WellDoc, Inc., where he led the product management activities for WellDoc’s portfolio of mobile health solutions. He was responsible for WellDoc’s landmark BlueStar product, a class II medical device and the world’s first reimbursed, prescription-only software for diabetes.

Paul’s prior experience includes 10 years in BD’s Diabetes Care business. Paul was responsible for the award-winning BD InterActiv® Diabetes Software, and was a member of the BD / Medtronic team that launched ParadigmLink®, the world’s first wireless blood glucose meter.

Paul holds four issued patents in medical software and drug delivery devices and has multiple patent applications. He is also an author of numerous peer-reviewed articles in medical informatics and diabetes. His education includes undergraduate studies in cognitive science and graduate work in health informatics and finance at the University of Minnesota and New York University.

Raymond Woo joined Ceribell in 2016 to lead its product research and development efforts. Throughout his career, Ray has worked to successfully bring innovative and disruptive medical device technologies to market. Prior to Ceribell, he was Global Head of Femtosecond Laser R&D at Abbott Medical Optics (now a part of J&J Vision), where he was responsible for R&D efforts across multiple product lines in both the laser cataract surgery and the laser vision correction markets. He helped to develop the Catalys laser cataract surgery system at Optimedica, which was acquired by Abbott Medical Optics. Ray received a Ph.D. and Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where his research focused on novel semiconductor devices. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University.

Dr. Nichole Young-Lin is a practicing board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and the Women’s Health Clinical Lead at Google. Her work includes product development (Fitbit), AI research projects (including generative AI), and supporting women’s health efforts across Google’s platforms. She also currently serves on the board of the UNFPA West Africa Innovation Board. Her background is in global health, having co-founded an international maternal health nonprofit that works to empower providers in low-resource areas and worked as a technical advisor for digital health projects at the World Health Organization.

Dr. Young-Lin received her medical degree (MD) from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and her masters in business administration (MBA) from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She completed her residency training at Stanford University where she continues to serve as adjunct faculty.

Dr. Piao has more than 30 years experience in HVAC industries. His work ranges from fundamental study of environmentally friendly refrigerants, new technologies of heatpump system, building energy efficiency, carbon reduction, etc. 

Dr. Piao built and led an innovation team in Silicon Valley since 2014, to help Daikin to create new data driven business. His recent focus areas are IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) and Carbon neutrality in buildings.

Daikin is a global leading company focusing on HVAC systems for built environments. Buildings are one of major focus area of Daikin. There is a huge opportunity for sensors in built environment, especially in the context of decarbonization/electrification, human comfort, and office worker productivity. Both opportunities and challenges will be discussed.

 

Alastair is DigiLens’ chief optical architect, being responsible for R&D development of DigiLens’ core holographic waveguide technology. This includes development of DigiLens high performance waveguides and holographic fabrication equipment & processes suitable for high volume scalability. He has enjoyed working for DigiLens since 2011 in the dynamic, exciting, and now rapidly developing XR/AR industry and in defining the future roadmaps for DigiLens technology, and possibly for the future of us all!

Over the past 25+ years Alastair has held senior and principal optical engineering positions with BAE SYSTEMS, OPTICS1/SAFRAN, and Panavision, where he has successfully innovated, designed, built, tested and deployed an extensive range of optical solutions. Alastair’s broad optical experience includes commercial, defense, visible, infrared, imaging, illumination, classical and holographic / diffractive optics.

Alastair holds a BSc.(Hons) in Optoelectronics and Laser engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, and an MSc. in Electronics from University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

Smart glasses to provide a digital layer to augment your world are available today, and are rapidly getting closer to an everyday reality for everyone. Waveguide technology enables this to be achieved and has widely been adopted as the preferred approach. Yet the question remains in many minds as to what is the best waveguide optical technology to enable this. The demands are considerable, including consumer expectations for high quality images set by today’s incredible flat panel displays, with yet higher expectations set by digital layers used by Hollywood’s characters. To meet highly anticipated consumer demands a solution that enables high quality optical performance, quick design, rapid scalability, while also achieving this at consumer price points is required. In this talk an introduction will be made to DigiLens’ holographic photopolymer technology and manufacturing approach, and to explain why DigiLens is ready to provide that solution today.

 

Jason Hartlove is a technology executive with over 35 years of experience developing and bringing to market first of a kind optical systems and technologies. Currently Vice President of AR Displays at Meta, he leads all development work to bring the Metaverse to the human visual system, including teams with expertise in perceptual image science, image processing, optical and traditional semiconductors, light engines, optics, waveguides, sensors, prescription lenses and novel manufacturing techniques including additive manufacturing. Most recently he was President and CEO of Nanosys where we pioneered the development of Quantum Dot technology for displays, with over 60 million units shipped across over 800 different consumer and IT SKUs from nearly every major brand in the world. He is a prolific inventor named on more than 100 patents including as co-inventor of one of the most ubiquitous technology products of the last 20 years, the billion-selling optical mouse. Previously he led product development at Hewlett Packard, ran Agilent’s 3,000-employee Malaysia-based manufacturing operation, and was a founding executive team member at MagnaChip Semiconductor, setting the company on a successful path to an IPO.

Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented reality platforms are creating the next step in the computer platform evolution. Building this new paradigm of wearable, all day persistent computing platforms requires understanding the five human senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The biggest challenge and largest opportunity in wearable electronics today lies in mimicking the way these senses work to create the sense of reality we need to convey virtual content seamlessly blended with the real world. While this spans myriad technologies, in this talk Jason Hartlove will introduce this topic and cover a few of these development focus areas.

 

Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She was Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018-2022. Bao founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) in 2016 and serves as the faculty director. She is a CZ Biohub investigator since 2022. Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995. She has close to 700 refereed publications and over 80 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 198. She is one of the Clarivate Citation Laureates.

Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Science.

Bao was the inaugural recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2022, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, Gibbs Medal by the Chicago session of ACS in 2020, Wilhelm Exner Medal by Austrian Federal Minister of Science 2018, ACS Award on Applied Polymer Science 2017, L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award in the Physical Sciences 2017.

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. She serves as an advising Partner for Fusion Venture Capital.

Bao has been working closely with colleagues in Science, Engineering and Medicine to advance the use of soft electronics for wearable and implantable electronics for precision health, precision mental health and advance the understanding of neuroscience. Her group has developed foundational materials and devices that enabled a a new generation of skin-inspired soft electronics. They open up unprecedented opportunities for understanding human health and developing monitoring, diagnosis and treatment tools. A few recent examples include: a wireless tuner growth monitoring tool, a wireless wound healing patch, a soft neurostring for simultaneous neurochemical monitoring in the brain and gut, and Mentaid: a wearable for monitoring mental health.

In this talk, I will discuss several recent applications of skin-inspired wearables, such as tumor progression monitoring, wound healing patch, and skin-sensor combined with meta learning for rapid hand gesture recognition.

Amir Foudeh is a Member of Technical Staff at Neuralink developing next generation of high bandwidth brain machine interfaces. Prior to Neuralink he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford under supervision of Prof. Bao working on wearable electronics for mental health application. He received his PhD from McGill University in Biomedical Engineering where he received Leslie A. Geddes Prize for the best Ph.D. dissertation for his work on developing lab on a chip devices for bio-sensing applications. He is an author of over 20 peer-reviewed papers.

Neuralink is a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–computer interfaces. It is building devices that have the potential to help people with paralysis and inventing new technologies that could expand our abilities. This talk will cover a few of the key core technologies that have been developed and some of the exciting next generation applications.

Dr. Jae-Woong Jeong is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He received his PhD degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2012, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2012 to 2014. Before joining KAIST, he was an Assistant Professor of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering at University of Colorado, Boulder from 2015 to 2017. Dr. Jeong’s research focus is in soft bio-integrated electronics and systems for brain research and advanced healthcare.

Optogenetics holds tremendous promise for dissecting neural circuits and controlling neurophysiological systems in freely behaving animals. However, the full potential of its in vivo applications is limited by the use of conventional optical fibers for photostimulation. This tool significantly damages neural tissue and severely limits the animal’s natural behavior, mainly due to its rigid construction, bulky design, and tethered operation. To address these limitations, we have developed soft optogenetic neural implants, which can provide wireless neurostimulation in awake, behaving animals. This design enables a compact, neurophilic system, thus enabling seamless chronic implantation and operation in the brain. This talk will overview our recent developments and highlight their prospects for neuroscience research and therapeutic applications.

Dr. Peter Tass investigates and develops neuromodulation techniques for understanding and treating neurologic conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, dysfunction following stroke and tinnitus. He creates invasive and non-invasive therapeutic procedures by means of comprehensive computational neuroscience studies and advanced data analysis techniques. The computational neuroscience studies guide experiments that use clinical electrophysiology measures, such as high density EEG recordings and MRI imaging, and various outcome measures. He has pioneered a neuromodulation approach based on thorough computational modelling that employs dynamic self-organization, plasticity and other neuromodulation principles to produce sustained effects after stimulation. To investigate stimulation effects and disease-related brain activity, he focuses on the development of stimulation methods that cause a sustained neural desynchronization by an unlearning of abnormal synaptic interactions. He also performs and contributes to pre-clinical and clinical research in related areas.

Abnormally strong neuronal synchronization is a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In medically refractory PD patients, standard deep brain stimulation (DBS) reduces specific symptoms during stimulus delivery. Coordinated Reset (CR)-DBS is a computationally developed technique which uses dedicated patterns of electrical stimuli to specifically counteract abnormal neuronal synchronization by desynchronization. The very goal of CR stimulation is to make neuronal populations unlearn abnormal synaptic connectivity patterns, in this way inducing long-lasting relief. Long-lasting therapeutic and desynchronizing CR-DBS effects were demonstrated in Parkinsonian (MPTP) monkeys and externalized PD patients. To provide a non-invasive alternative to DBS, we developed vibrotactile Coordinated Reset (vCR) fingertip stimulation. To this end, instead of administering electrical bursts through depth electrodes, we non-invasively deliver weak vibratory bursts in a CR mode to patients’ fingertips. In a first-in-human study, vCR fingertip stimulation was administered to 5 idiopathic PD patients for in total 4 h per day on 3 consecutive days. Off-medication kinematic assessments revealed improved gait and bradykinesia during stimulation days and after 1 month after cessation of stimulation. In a pilot study, six idiopathic PD patients were treated with vCR stimulation delivered for in total 4 hours per day for 3 months. Patients’ conditions were evaluated after medication withdrawal (off medication) by means of MDS-UPDRS III scores and EEG recordings before and after 3 months of vCR. vCR therapy caused a statistically and clinically significant reduction of PD symptoms off medication together with a significant reduction of high beta (21-30 Hz) power in the sensorimotor cortex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSjv6m4xLH0 ). Additionally, in a case series in 3 idiopathic PD patients, 6+ months of vCR therapy caused a significant motor improvement, where off-medication MDS-UPDRS III scores decreased linearly. The ultimate goal of vCR is to induce sustained symptom relief by non-invasively delivering weak vibratory stimulation patterns only regularly or occasionally.

Dr. Nick West is Chief Medical Officer and Divisional Vice President of Global Medical Affairs for Abbott’s vascular business. He graduated in medicine from Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge and St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, London, and trained in interventional cardiology at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Green Lane Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand. Until late 2019 he was a practising NHS interventional cardiologist, first at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospitals Trust, where he set up the county’s non-surgical PCI center, and latterly at the Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, the UK’s largest specialist cardiothoracic center. His research interests include vascular biology, coronary physiology/microvascular function, intracoronary imaging/vulnerable plaque detection, acute myocardial infarction and use of bioresorbable scaffolds. He was a founding member of the Cambridge-based vulnerable plaque biotech startup, PlaqueTec Ltd.

From our primary research program, it is clear that in today’s fragmented healthcare systems, truly patient-centric and personalized healthcare remains an unfulfilled aim in cardiovascular disease. The ability to drive tailored and individualized care pathways relies on acquiring patient-level data in volumes hitherto unseen. While wearables and remote monitoring devices are potentially key elements in delivering this promise, their function goes beyond acting simply as data harvesting tools, and could encompass the capability to influence patient behaviors. As a key component to improve outcomes and shared decision-making, wearables can support adherence to medications and lifestyle changes. Unresolved hurdles include broad acceptability, access, data privacy/trust, and the ability to acquire and integrate data into predictive care models and electronic healthcare records.

Michael Snyder is the Stanford Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine. He received his Ph.D. training at the California Institute of Technology and carried out postdoctoral training at Stanford University. Dr. Snyder has pioneered the use of “big data” and multiomics to advance scientific discovery and transform healthcare. His laboratory has invented many technologies that are widely used in medicine and research, including methods for characterizing genomes and their products (e.g. RNA-Seq, NGS paired end sequencing, ChIP-Chip and later Chip-Seq, protein arrays, machine learning for disease gene discovery). His application of omics and wearables technologies to perform longitudinal profiling of people when they are healthy and ill is transforming medicine and healthcare. Indeed, his laboratory’s recent work to use smartwatches and wearables to detect illness, including infectious disease such as COVID-19, prior to symptom onset is being used by many thousands of people.

We have been trying to transform healthcare from the current practice of diagnosing and treating people when they are ill (i.e., sickcare) to actively monitoring people while they are healthy and trying to keep them that way1,2,3,4. This involves collecting deep data while they are health detecting shifts from their healthy baseline. Using smartwatches and CGM we have been detecting illness from infectious disease and glucose dysfunction, respectively, pre-symptomatically. We have also developed a novel microsampling methods for remote sampling for deep biochemical profiles. These approaches will enable facile and proactive health monitoring. 

Zhenan Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) in 2016 and serves as the faculty director.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995. She has over 700 refereed publications and over 100 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index >190.

Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and is a member of its scientific affair committee.

Bao was the inaugural recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2022, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, Gibbs Medal by the Chicago session of ACS in 2020, Wilhelm Exner Medal by Austrian Federal Minister of Science 2018, ACS Award on Applied Polymer Science 2017, L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award in the Physical Sciences 2017.

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. She serves as an advising Partner for Fusion Venture Capital.

Skin is the body’s largest organ. It is responsible for the transduction of a vast amount of information. This conformable, stretchable, self-healable and biodegradable material simultaneously collects signals from external stimuli that translate into information such as pressure, pain, and temperature. Over the past decade, we have developed materials design concepts to add skin-like functions to organic electronic materials without compromising their electronic properties. These new materials and new devices enabled development of skin-like sensors for a broad range of applications in medical devices, robotics and wearable electronics. In this talk, I will discuss our recent sensor developments to allow mapping bioelectrical signals and neurotransmitters in addition to physiological signals.

Ian H. Gotlib is the Marjorie Mhoon Fair Professor and Director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory at Stanford University. From 2005-2010, Dr. Gotlib served as Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, and he served as Chair of the Psychology Department at Stanford from 2012-2018.

In his research, Dr. Gotlib examines psychobiological factors that place individuals at increased risk for developing depression and engaging in suicidal behaviors, as well as processes that are protective in this context. More specifically, Dr. Gotlib examines neural, cognitive, social, endocrinological, and genetic factors in depressed individuals and applies findings from these investigations to the study of predictors of depression in children at risk for this disorder. In related projects, Dr. Gotlib is also examining the differential effects of early life stress on the trajectories of neurodevelopment in boys and girls through puberty in an effort to explain the increased prevalence of depression and suicidal behaviors in girls in adolescence. Finally, Dr. Gotlib is extending this work to the study of brain function and structure, endocrine function, and behaviors in neonates and infants being raised in suboptimal environments.

Dr. Gotlib’s research is supported largely by grants from the National Institutes of Health. He has also been funded by the National Health Research Development Program and the Medical Research Council of Canada, and leads an interdisciplinary team funded by PHIND. Dr. Gotlib has received the Distinguished Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, the Joseph Zubin Award for lifetime research contributions to the understanding of psychopathology, the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution, the APS Distinguished Scientist Award, and a MERIT award from NIMH. He has published over 500 scientific articles and has written or edited several books in the areas of depression and stress, including the Handbook of Depression with Constance Hammen, now in its 3rd edition. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychopathological Association, and is Past President of the Society for Research in Psychopathology.

The transition through adolescence is difficult for many individuals and is characterized by high rates of depression. In fact, adolescent-onset depression is associated with longer and more severe episodes that are often refractory to treatment, and with functional impairment that places adolescents at risk for longstanding difficulties. Over the past 8 years we have recruited and characterized a sample of over 200 boys and girls, starting at ages 9-13 years, with respect to their exposure to early life stress, their stress reactivity, immune function, rate of biological aging, sleep quality, and patterns of brain structure, function, and connectivity. We have re-assessed these boys and girls every two years and have begun to elucidate factors that contribute to the development of depression in adolescence. Importantly, our study was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, that has caused significant stress and disruption for adolescents and has likely led to alterations in their mental health and neurodevelopment. In fact, it is not clear whether adolescents who lived through the pandemic are comparable psychobiologically to their peers assessed before the pandemic. In this talk I will describe findings of our study characterizing associations among early life stress, neurodevelopment, and mental health in adolescents, and will describe how youth assessed during the pandemic differ from youth assessed before the COVID-19 shutdowns.

Dr. Soh received his B.S. with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science with Distinction from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. From 1999 to 2003, Dr. Soh served as the technical manager of MEMS Device Research Group at Bell Laboratories and Agere Systems. He was a faculty member at UCSB before joining Stanford in 2015. His current research interests are in analytical biotechnology, especially in high-throughput screening, directed evolution, and integrated biosensors.

A biosensor capable of continuously measuring specific molecules in vivo would provide a valuable window into patients’ health status and their response to therapeutics. Unfortunately, continuous, real-time molecular measurement is currently limited to a handful of analytes (i.e. glucose and oxygen) and these sensors cannot be generalized to measure other analytes. In this talk, we will present a biosensor technology that can be generalized to measure a wide range of biomolecules in living subjects. To achieve this, we develop molecular switches that change its structure upon binding to its target analyte and produce an electrochemical current or emit light. Our real-time biosensor requires no exogenous reagents and can be readily reconfigured to measure different target analytes by exchanging the molecular switches in a modular manner. Using our real-time biosensor, we demonstrate the first closed loop feedback control of drug concentration in live animals and discuss potential applications of this technology. Finally, we will discuss methods for generating the molecular switches which are at the heart of this biosensor technology.

Dr. Zeitzer is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the co-director of the Stanford Center for Sleep and Circadian Science. He is also a health science specialist at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. He has researched the interactions of sleep and circadian rhythms for more than 25 years.

Diurnal (24-hr) activity patterns are commonly recorded or inferred from a variety of modern technologies, notably wearable activity trackers and cell phones. Our previous research demonstrated that these patterns are at the very least epiphenomenal to a variety of physical and psychiatric ailments. Activity patterns can be predictive of both short-term changes in mental status (e.g., shift from euthymic to depressed), long-term changes in health (e.g., likelihood of 7-year survival), and phenotyping current condition (e.g., apathy vs. depression). We are now quantitating the diurnal activity patterns observed in the UK Biobank, a large (>100,000) population-based sample of middle- and older-aged adults. Associations between these diurnal patterns and a variety of pathologies are being explored as are the value of these biomarkers in prediction and phenotyping of medical and psychiatric conditions (e.g., pain, Parkinson’s disease, bipolar disorder, adverse childhood experiences). 

Karl Deisseroth is Professor of Bioengineering, and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at Stanford, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Deisseroth received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1992, his PhD from Stanford in 1998, and his MD from Stanford in 2000. Deisseroth then completed his medical internship and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He continues as a practicing psychiatrist (inpatient and outpatient) at Stanford with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation. Deisseroth also serves as Director of Undergraduate Education for Bioengineering at Stanford, and is known for providing free educational programs that have disseminated his technologies to thousands of laboratories around the world.

In exploring how properties of the brain arise from activity of its cellular components, Deisseroth has pioneered the basic science discoveries that enabled this goal, including resolving the structural and functional mysteries of natural light-gated ion channels, and discovery of the neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behavior. Along the way, over the last 17 years, his laboratory has created and developed technologies for observing and controlling biological systems (like the brain) at high resolution, while maintaining these systems in the intact state; these technologies include optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry, and a broad range of enabling methods.

Deisseroth has also published a book of literary nonfiction, relating the experiences of psychiatric patients to modern neuroscience– Projections (Penguin Random House)­­– in 2021.

Deisseroth was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2010, to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2019. For his work, Deisseroth has received the 2010 Nakasone Prize, 2012 Perl Prize, 2013 Lounsbery Prize, 2013 Gabbay Prize, 2013 BRAIN Prize, 2014 Dickson Prize in Science, 2015 Breakthrough Prize, Keio Prize, 2015 Lurie Prize, 2015 Albany Prize, 2015 Dickson Prize in Medicine, 2016 BBVA Award, 2017 Massry Prize, 2017 Fresenius Prize, 2018 Gairdner Award, 2018 Kyoto Prize, 2020 Heineken Prize, and 2021 Lasker Award.

In Projections: A Story of Human Emotions author Prof. Karl Deisseroth draws on concepts across neuroscience, psychiatry, and genetics to create engaging portrayals of mental disorders that give insights into the workings of the brain.

In this fireside chat, we will explore with Prof. Deisseroth fascinating insights from his book…

• How optogenetics is mapping pathways of emotion in the brain
• Differences in neural processing for autism, anxiety, and bipolar disorder
• How genetics and evolution played a role in allowing mental disorders to exist

Dr. Tsung-Ching (Jim) Huang is a Research Scientist with Meta Reality Labs and he leads research projects related to flexible and stretchable electronics design and modeling. Prior to Meta Reliability Labs, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Labs, Senior Design Engineer at tsmc, and Post-Doctoral Researcher at University of Tokyo. His research interests include energy-efficient circuit design, reliable flexible and stretchable system, and design automation. He has 50+ peer-reviewed publications and 40+ US patents granted. Dr. Huang is Fellow of NextFlex and Senior Member of IEEE.

As we move from personal computing to human-centric computing, we see great promises for people to better connect with their family, friend, or colleague around the globe despite of physical distance. All-day wearable devices such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) glasses, wristbands, or gloves equipped with the ubiquitous connectivity can empower people to connect, feel, and interact more intuitively than using today’s mobile phones or personal computers. In my presentation, I will talk about the promises and the technical challenges of wearable systems design using flexible, hybrid, and printed electronics, and how a design-manufacture ecosystem might help.

Ken Goodson is the Davies Family Provostial Professor and the Senior Associate Engineering Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Stanford, where he holds appointments in Mechanical Engineering and (by courtesy) Materials Science.  His 50 PhD graduates are distributed evenly IC companies and professorships at top schools including MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.  Goodson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow with ASME, IEEE, APS, AAAS, and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).  Awards include the ASME Kraus Medal, the inaugural IEEE Richard Chu Award, the AIChE Kern Award, and the SRC Technical Excellence, University Researcher, and Aristotle Awards.  Goodson has 35 patents and co-founded Cooligy, which built heat sinks for Apple desktops.  He served recently as Stanford Mechanical Engineering Chair and recruited 15 faculty who transformed the department’s scholarship and diversity. 

Heat removal poses design limits and adds parasitic power loads for electronics at all scales, from servers and laptops to wearables.  This problem is amplified for many portables owing to the competition between targeted mechanical properties, such as flexibility and dielectric insulation, and the thermal conductivity, which can scales up with stiffness and or electrical conductivity.  This talk describes cooling innovations including fluidic heat sinks and spreaders containing thermal metamaterials, which combine thermal, mechanical, and fluidic properties not found in nature.  These novel devices approach “thermal ground plane” performance and offer breakthrough thermal design options for electronics at all scales.  This talk will also briefly discuss our contributions to data center cooling, which are surging in environmental impact due to power and heat management demands, and play an indirect role in the success of all cloud-based devices.  Finally, this talk will highlight extensive design and prototyping with IC companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Jonathan “JB” Berent is the CEO and Founder of NextSense, Inc, a spinoff of X, Google’s Moonshot Factory.   He combines broad executive business experiences at elite Silicon Valley tech companies with a passion for driving novel scientific exploration in states of consciousness.  Prior to a career pivot in 2016 focused on building novel biosensing wearables, JB was responsible for driving revenue at Oracle at their inside sales division, Oracle Direct, earning the distinction of Director of the Year based on his team having the highest performance across the 2000 person Org in 2008.  After Oracle, JB led sales & partnerships, Birst, a SF based start-up focused on business intelligence reporting to the CEO.  JB joined Google in 2011 to lead their West Coast sales and partnerships efforts for the newly formed Google Offers, a direct competitor to GroupOn.  JB managed teams of 110+ people with responsibility of $50M+ at public companies.  

In 2016, JB followed his passion and left Sales and Partnerships to focus on a life-long belief that unlocking the mind is the key to both health and maximizing human potential.  He built a team at X to develop brain sensing technologies. What started as a 20 percent project in 2017 grew into X’s largest funded early-pipeline project by 2020. At NextSense, he completed 3 IP transactions, 3 commercial contracts with Pharma, and two academic partnerships in the first 12 months.   Along with a number prominent sleep and dream researchers, he published the groundbreaking study revealing a mechanism to study an altered state of consciousness accessible during sleep.  Berent has spoken at various conferences such as Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, Stanford Medicine Big Data Health, and the California Sleep Society where he discussed the latest scientific findings for an unusual state of dreaming characterized by increased frontal lobe activity despite being in a classic REM state.  He is a regular guest lecturer at Stanford’s popular Dement’s Sleep and Dream course.  Berent gave the inaugural First Annual Dr. Ahmed Ghouri Medical AI Memorial Lecture in 2021 at UCSF. JB was invited to speak to the National Academies of Science Standing Committee of Biotechnology Capabilities and National Security Needs in Jan 2022 on the topic, “Discussing the Impending Impact of Pervasive Brain – Monitoring Technology.”  JB was featured in long-read cover story in Wired magazine in the June 2022 print edition  He was also named “One to Watch” by Robb Report in June 2022.  JB received his BA with Honors in Philosophy & Religious Studies from Stanford University. 

Much of the focus for BCI has been around addressing extremely important pathological conditions where the promise of thought-computing brings much needed accessibility to computing platforms generally.  However, this framework should be expanded by including the concepts of digital twins and applying this to neural signatures collected over-time and at scale with millions of users.  With AI applied to such data, we can eagerly anticipate a future where the brain is a platform, and the ear is the USB port for reading/writing to this platform.  In this talk, CEO and Founder of NextSense, will discuss how NextSense is enabling this future right now and the insights it has gained in its clinical studies in epilepsy and sleep, and how this will evolve over time. 

Tony is a research scientist with a focus on using consumer technologies to empower people to manage and improve their health. At Fitbit and Google, Tony leads algorithm development and clinical studies using wearables for disease screening and monitoring. Tony led the Fitbit Heart Study, the clinical trial for the Fitbit Irregular Rhythm Notifications feature, designed to detect signs of atrial fibrillation from the optical heart rate sensors on Fitbit devices.

Tony obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and did a post doctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the department of Radiology. He has spent much of his career in cardiovascular MRI research. Before joining Fitbit, Tony was a research scientist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Background: Morbidity from undiagnosed atrial fibrillation (AF) may be preventable with early detection. Many consumer wearables contain optical photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors to measure pulse rate. PPG-based software algorithms that detect irregular heart rhythms may identify undiagnosed AF in large populations using wearables, but minimizing false positive detections is essential.

Methods: We performed a prospective remote clinical trial to examine a novel PPG-based algorithm for detecting undiagnosed AF from a range of wrist-worn devices. Adults aged ≥ 22 years in the United States without AF, using compatible wearable Fitbit devices and Android or iOS smartphones, were included. PPG data were analyzed using a novel algorithm that examines overlapping 5-minute pulse windows (tachograms). Eligible participants with an irregular heart rhythm detection (IHRD), defined as 11 consecutive irregular tachograms, were invited to schedule a telehealth visit and were mailed a one-week ambulatory electrocardiogram (ECG) patch monitor. The primary outcome was the positive predictive value (PPV) of the first IHRD during ECG patch monitoring for concurrent AF.  

Results: 455,699 participants enrolled (median age 47 years, 71% female, 73% White) between May 6 and October 1, 2020. IHRDs occurred for 4,728 (1%) participants, and 2,070 (4%) aged ≥ 65 years during a median of 122 (IQR, 110–134) days at risk for an IHRD. Among 1,057 participants with an IHRD notification and subsequent analyzable ECG patch monitor, AF was present in 340 (32.2%). Of the 225 participants with another IHRD during ECG patch monitoring, 221 had concurrent AF on the ECG and 4 did not, resulting in an IHRD PPV of 98.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 95.5%–99.5%). For participants aged ≥ 65 years, the IHRD PPV was 97.0% (95% CI, 91.4%–99.4%).

Conclusions: A novel PPG software algorithm for wearable Fitbit devices exhibited a high PPV for concurrent AF and identified participants likely to have AF on subsequent ECG patch monitoring. Wearable devices may facilitate identifying individuals with undiagnosed AF.

Dr. Spitler is the Deputy Director of the Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center at Stanford University. He completed his Post Doctorial Research Fellowship (SCIT) at Stanford University School of Medicine, conducting research in the developing field of Magnetogenetics for remote controlled cellular reprogramming and developed smart MRI cell tracking tools for oncology cell tracking studies. He has designed numerous biological models, synthetic biology approaches and worked on the development of new technologies in a number of scientific areas ranging from medical devices to gene therapy. Prior to his position at Stanford, Dr. Spitler received his Ph.D. in Cellular and Developmental Biology at the Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California, Irvine. His research at the Beckman Laser Institute included developing and characterizing new nitric oxide-based drugs, laser, and LED-based multimodal wound healing therapies some of which are currently being used in the clinic as a result of his work.

Dr. Spitler received his Bachelor’s of Science degree in Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he worked in the area of structural biology. Over the past two decades he has held a number of academic and industrial positions and has served as an advisor or advisory board member for a number of Bay Area companies. Dr. Spitler is the recipient of the Stanford Cancer Imaging Fellowship Training Award, RSL Innovation Challenge Award, the Biophotas Research Fellowship, and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Imaging Achievement Award. 

Jennifer Hicks is Deputy Director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford, with a focus on collaborative research projects and programs to advance our understanding of the biological principles underlying human performance. Dr. Hicks also serves as the Director of Research for the Mobilize Center, an NIH Biomedical Technology Resource Center at Stanford University and the Restore Center, an NIH-funded center that brings state-of-the-art engineering tools to rehabilitation scientists. Her research is focused on interfacing biomechanical modeling with statistical and machine learning methods to predict the effects of surgery and other interventions on human movement. She is also using data from mobile phones and other novel sources to understand physical activity and performance. Dr. Hicks helps run the multi-faceted training and outreach programs of the Human Performance Alliance, the Mobilize Center and the Restore Center. In addition, as the Research and Development Manager for the OpenSim software project, she guides the project’s development team and serves as the voice of the software user/researcher.

Ellen Kuhl is the Walter B. Reinhold Professor in the School of Engineering and Robert Bosch Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. She is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, Bioengineering. She received her PhD from the University of Stuttgart in 2000 and her Habilitation from the University of Kaiserslautern in 2004. Her area of expertise is Living Matter Physics, the design of theoretical and computational models to simulate and predict the behavior of living systems. Ellen has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and edited two books; she is an active reviewer for more than 50 journals at the interface of engineering and medicine and an editorial board member of seven international journals in her field. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she published a textbook on Computational Epidemiology and Data-Driven Modeling of COVID-19. Ellen is a founding member of the Living Heart Project, a translational research initiative to revolutionize cardiovascular science through realistic simulation with 400 participants from research, industry, and medicine from 24 countries. Ellen is the current Chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics and a Member-Elect of the World Council of Biomechanics. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the American Institute for Mechanical and Biological Engineering. She received the National Science Foundation Career Award in 2010, was selected as Midwest Mechanics Seminar Speaker in 2014, and received the Humboldt Research Award in 2016 and the ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award in 2021. Ellen is a three-time All American triathlete, a multiple Boston, Chicago, and New York marathon runner, and a two-time Kona Ironman World Championship qualifier.

Steven M. Levine, PhD is the Sr. director of virtual human modeling at Dassault Systèmes. Dr. Levine has more than 30 years of experience in the development of computational tools that translate cutting-edge science into product innovations. He currently leads Virtual Human Modeling at Dassault Systèmes and is the Founder and Executive Director of the Living Heart Project. He is responsible for a Life Science incubator of startup healthcare companies within the 3D EXPERIENCE Labs, building a marketplace of digital healthcare services, and serves on several company boards. Dr. Levine was elected into the College of Fellows in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and holds a PhD in Materials Science from Rutgers University. He began is career in health tech at the San Diego based startup Biosym that went public as Accelrys in 2004 and acquired by Dassault Systèmes in 2014.

Dave is a biostatistician with expertise in prognostic models, clinical trials, observational studies, and diagnostic devices. Dave joined Unlearn as Head of Biostatistics before becoming Chief Science Officer, overseeing clinical, regulatory, and biostatistics. Prior to Unlearn, Dave was the first Head of Biostatistics & Epidemiology for Verily Life Sciences. Other past roles include Lead Program Biostatistician at Genomic Health and Sr Dir of Medical Affairs Statistical Analysis at ICON Clinical Research. Dave received his bachelors and masters in Statistics from Carnegie Mellon. He has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed papers in medical journals.

Zhenan Bao is a K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She has served as the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018. Prof. Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors. She founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR) and is the faculty director. She is also an affiliated faculty member of Precourt Institute, Woods Institute, ChEM-H and Bio-X. Prof. Bao received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from The University of Chicago in 1995 and then joined the Materials Research Department of Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies. Prof. Bao currently has more than 500 refereed publications and more than 65 US patents. She is a Founder on the Board of Directors of C3 Nano Co. and PyrAmes, both Silicon Valley venture funded companies. She was a recipient of the ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, ACS Gibbs Medal recipient in 2020, Wilhelm Exner Medal from the Austrian Federal Minister of Science in 2018, the L’Oreal UNESCO Women in Science Award North America Laureate in 2017. She was awarded the ACS Applied Polymer Science Award in 2017 and ACS Creative Polymer Chemistry Award in 2013. Prof. Bao has been selected by Nature magazine as “Ten People Who Mattered” and “Master of Materials” for her work on artificial electronic skin in 2015.

Effective and interactive human-machine interface requires sensors, haptic feedbacks and displaying real-time information. In this talk, I will discuss several recent development on novel skin-like devices, include stretchable displays, artificial muscle and electrophysiology. These new inventions will enable new possibilities for human-machine interface virtually or in-person.

Becca Spiegel is a Senior Product Manager at W.L. Gore and Associates and has been with the company since 2010. Ms. Spiegel is leading an intrapreneurial venture to bring a thermal insulation product to the mobile electronics market. She specializes in new-to-world products, integrating cross-functional teams, and driving activities based on strong customer feedback. Ms. Spiegel has an MBA from the Fox School of Business at Temple University and a B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland.

Thermal management in mobile devices is typically dominated by planar spreading technologies such as graphite, heat pipes, and vapor chambers. However, as devices continue to get thinner, the high z-axis conductivity of these methods plays a large role in the creation of surface hot spots. Insulation can be used to prevent surface hot spots and has also been shown to increase the effectiveness of thermal spreading by these technologies, leading to an increase in performance. For wearable devices which lack the surface area of other mobile devices, insulation is a crucial thermal management tool to ensure a good user experience from both a performance and safety perspective.

Nima Aghaeepour is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University. His laboratory develops machine learning and artificial intelligence methods to study clinical and biological modalities in translational settings.  He is primarily interested in leveraging multiomics studies, wearable devices, and electronic health records to address global health challenges. His work is recognized by awards from numerous national and international organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the March of Dimes Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Recent technological advances in science provide novel opportunities to unravel the complex biology of diseases. Immunological changes in translational settings are often highly dynamic and involve multiple interconnected biological systems. We will discuss a series of machine learning innovations which enable objective analysis of the immune system at several biological levels. Next, we will discuss how wearable devices can be used in translational settings to facilitate biological profiling, as well as to identify modifiable factors that can modulate the immune system without relying on pharmaceutical interventions. 

Dr. Alex Abramson is a postdoctoral fellow in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University working with Profs. Zhenan Bao and the late Sanjiv S. Gambhir. Dr. Abramson received his B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT under the direction of Profs. Robert Langer and Giovanni Traverso. His research, which focuses on oral biologic drug delivery and bioelectronic therapeutics, has been featured in news outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, and Wired. Dr. Abramson has received several recognitions for scientific innovation, including being named a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Science List and being named an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow. Alex is passionate about translating scientific endeavors from bench to bedside. Recently, Novo Nordisk exclusively licensed a portfolio of his patents to bring into clinical trials, and Alex serves as a scientific advisor overseeing their commercialization. In his spare time, Dr. Abramson acts as an executive member of the Stanford Chemical Engineering DEI Committee, volunteers as a STEM tutor at a local middle school, mentors start-up ventures in the biotechnology space, plays golf, and hikes.

Assessing the efficacy of cancer therapeutics in mouse models is a critical step in treatment development. However, low resolution measurement tools and small sample sizes make determining drug efficacy in vivo a difficult and time-intensive task. Here I will discuss a commercially scalable wearable electronic sensor that automates the in vivo testing of cancer therapeutics by continuously monitoring micrometer-scale tumor volume progression or regression in real-time. Histology, caliper measurements, and bioluminescence imaging over a one-week treatment period validated the sensor’s recordings, but the sensor’s higher time and length scale resolutions provided the only measurement technique capable of continuously monitoring the immediate hour-scale pharmacodynamic response of a given drug. In mice with two subcutaneously implanted tumor models our sensors recorded significant volume reductions in tumors just 5 hours after small molecule or immunotherapy treatment initiation. We anticipate that real-time tumor regression datasets could help expedite and automate the process of screening cancer therapies in vivo.

Bingyi Wang is a PhD candidate in physics and a Knight-Hennessy scholar at Stanford. A proud member in Prof. Daniel Palanker’s lab, she strives to develop the next generation retinal prostheses targeting patients with AMD (age-related macular degeneration). Her current work involves designing, fabricating, and in vivo testing of photovoltaic implants that serve as ‘electronic photoreceptors.’ She graduated from Williams college with a B.A. in physics and is a passionate musician outside of science.

Dr. Bullock received her undergraduate degree with honors and distinction in physiology and psychology from the University of California, San Diego, Revelle College and her medical degree from George Washington University in Washington, DC. She completed an internship in internal medicine at Washington Hospital in D.C. and a psychiatry residency at Stanford University. She is a diplomat in the subspecialties of Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry and Lifestyle Medicine. She is currently appointed Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences within Stanford’s School of Medicine. Dr. Bullock is the founder and Director of Stanford’s Neurobehavioral Clinic and Virtual Reality & Immersive Technologies (VRIT) program and laboratory. She also is a leader and pioneer in telehealth services using XR. She has published many peer-reviewed articles and is a Cambridge and Oxford Press author on the subject of functional neurological disorders. Her primary clinical research interest is exploring the use of technology for trauma treatment and psychiatric illnesses involving disruption of bodily perception and function. She is currently focused on the use and dissemination of immersive technologies for telepsychiatry as well as its use in augmentation of physiotherapy, psychotherapy, and skills acquisition. She treats a multitude of illness domains including trauma, phobias, anxiety, pain, mood disorders, and somatic symptom-related disorders. She also provides support and connects researchers, providers, and developers of immersive technology through the Stanford Psychiatry Immersive Technology Consortium (SPIT-C). Dr. Bullock currently sees patients, teaches, and performs research. She takes a holistic, customized, and personal approach to each patient and encourages family and community involvement in the treatment process. She is intensively trained and teaches both cognitive behavior therapy and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). She runs weekly DBT groups for friends and family, neuropsychiatric patients, and DBT graduates as well as delivers individual comprehensive DBT and CBT and virtual reality psychotherapies. She presents and speaks on the subject of virtual reality, DBT, and Functional Neurological Disorder internationally and locally.

Interested in how new applications of technology could support work in mental illness? For the past three decades, Extended Reality (XR), which includes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), has been used to treat a variety of behavioral and mental health conditions. The recent technological advances in immersive technology brought about by mobile and gaming devices are offering more access to XR and potential uses. For example, XR can be used to deliver telehealth, enhance learning and psychotherapy, or change implicit biases/stigma. Embodied VR is a newer form of XR that is being explored and uses avatar body transfer experiences. It may offer many uses in behavioral health such as role-playing opportunities for skills acquisition or help with many problems including maladaptive body image/satisfaction, social skills deficits, avoidance behaviors, chronic pain, and somatic symptoms.

Gordon Wetzstein is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science at Stanford University. He is the leader of the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering. At the intersection of computer graphics and vision, computational optics, and applied vision science, Prof. Wetzstein’s research has a wide range of applications in next-generation imaging, display, wearable computing, and microscopy systems. Prior to joining Stanford in 2014, Prof. Wetzstein was a Research Scientist at MIT, he received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in 2011 and graduated with Honors from the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany before that. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, a Terman Fellowship, an Okawa Research Grant, the Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year 2017 Award, an Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Award, and a Laval Virtual Award as well as Best Paper and Demo Awards at ICCP 2011, 2014, and 2016 and at ICIP 2016.

Holographic near-eye displays promise unprecedented capabilities for virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) systems; they can accurately reproduce focus cues, improve power efficiency, and correct for optical aberrations. However, the image quality achieved by traditional holographic displays is limited, and algorithms for computer-generated holography (CGH) are slow. In this talk, we review emerging artificial intelligence–enabled holographic near-eye displays that promise to solve these long-standing challenges.

Mark Brongersma is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received his PhD in Materials Science from the FOM Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 1998. From 1998-2001 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He coined the terms Plasmonics and Mie-tronics for the fields of science and technology that aim to manipulate light with metallic and high-index nanostructures. He is on the list of Global Highly Cited Researchers (Clarivate Analytics). Brongersma received a National Science Foundation Career Award, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, the International Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences (Physics) for his work on plasmonics, and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the SPIE, and the American Physical Society.

Since the development of diffractive optical elements in the 1970s, major research efforts have focused on replacing bulky optical components by thinner, planar counterparts. The more recent advent of metasurfaces, i.e. nanostructured optical coatings, has further accelerated the development of flat optics through the realization that nanoscale antenna elements can be utilized to facilitate local and nonlocal control over the light scattering amplitude and phase.

In this presentation, I will show how passive and active metasurfaces can start to impact Augmented and Virtual Reality applications. I will discuss the creation of high-efficiency, metasurfaces for optical combiners for near-eye displays, OLED displays, and eye tracking systems. The proposed optical elements can be fabricated by scalable fabrication technologies, opening the door to a wide range of commercial applications.

Allison M. Okamura received the BS degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, and the MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in 1996 and 2000, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. She is currently Professor in the mechanical engineering department at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in computer science. She is currently co-general chair of the 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems and a deputy director of the Wu Tsai Stanford Neurosciences Institute. She has been editor-in-chief of the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics, editor-in-chief of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Conference Editorial Board, an editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research, and co-chair of the IEEE Haptics Symposium. Her awards include the 2020 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Technical Achievement Award, 2019 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Service Award, and the 2016 Duca Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. She is an IEEE Fellow. Her academic interests include haptics, teleoperation, virtual environments and simulators, medical robotics, soft robotics, neuromechanics and rehabilitation, prosthetics, and education. Outside academia, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, running, and playing ice hockey. More information about her group’s research is available at http://charm.stanford.edu

Haptic devices allow touch-based information transfer between humans and intelligent systems, enabling communication in a salient but private manner that frees other sensory channels. For such devices to become ubiquitous, their physical and computational aspects must be intuitive and unobtrusive. The amount of information that can be transmitted through touch is limited in large part by the location, distribution, and sensitivity of human mechanoreceptors. Not surprisingly, many haptic devices are designed to be held or worn at the highly sensitive fingertips, yet stimulation using a device attached to the fingertips precludes natural use of the hands. Thus, we explore the design of a wide array of haptic feedback mechanisms, ranging from devices that can be actively touched by the fingertips to multi-modal haptic actuation mounted on the arm. We demonstrate how these devices are effective in virtual reality, human-machine communication, and human-human communication.

Bernard has been involved in the field of optics and specifically micro-optics for the past 2 decades, as an associate professor, instructor, author, entrepreneur, engineer, team manager and engineering director. He has been instrumental in developing new optical technologies that have been included in various industrial, defense and consumer products, in fields such as laser materials processing, optical anti-counterfeiting, biotech sensors, optical telecom devices, optical data storage, optical computing, motion sensors, displays, depth map sensors, and more recently head-up and head mounted displays (smart glasses, AR, VR and MR). His is specifically involved in the field of micro-optics, wafer scale optics, holography and nanophotonics. Bernard has published various books and book chapters on micro-optics and has more than 50 patents granted worldwide. He is chairing the SPIE AR/VR/MR conference series. He was elected in 2020 to the presidential chain of the SPIE, and serves currently as its President-Elect (2022). During the past decade, Bernard has been the principal optical architect on the Google Glass project and the partner optical architect on the Hololens team at Microsoft. He is now the Director for XR engineering at Google Labs in Mountain View.

Throughout the past decade, may attempts have been made at defining and developing hardware for consumer AR glasses. The vast majority of them failed. Today, with the rise of novel Metaverse concepts, alongside similar investments as through the past attempts, we discover novel AR hardware specifically targeted to providing Metaverse type experiences and use cases to the consumer. We will review such use cases and potential display and sensing architectures.

Hanseul received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University. He is a Ph.D. student in communication, where he studies the social science and technology behind AR and VR. His current research topics include social interaction in AR and telepresence.

Dr. Harutyunyan is currently Senior Chief Scientist at Honda Research Institute USA Inc. located in San Jose, CA. His responsibilities include leading research and developing strategies for quantum information science (qubits and magnetometers) as well as new materials for high energy density batteries. He is an author of more than 150 scientific publications and more than 140 patents worldwide. He is a Fellow of APS and AAAS also Elected Chairman of External Advisory Board of ECS. Harutyunyan received his B.A. degree in “Quantum Physics and Electronics” and Ph.D. in “Solid-State Physics and Mathematics.”

Recent advances in wearable devices boosted demand of batteries with high energy density and excellent robustness towards mechanical stresses. We address this challenge by eliminating electrochemically inactive metal current collectors, binders and additives from Li-ion battery architecture by using self-standing electrodes, and thereby approaching the ceiling of gravimetric energy density imposed by Li-storage material. This novel solution-free electrode fabrication technology is based on in-situ mixing of as-grown pristine single-wall carbon nanotubes with aerosolized active materials in ratios that provide electrical conductivity higher than percolation value, adequate mechanical robustness under stretching ( ≤15%), bending (d≥2mm) and twisting (θ>180o) cycles. This technology that can be utilized also for conventional batteries, eliminates the use of toxic solutions and binders from production line, and thereby allows easy recycling of the constituent materials. Moreover, it promotes the ecofriendly circular economy for batteries, which is vital in anticipation of about two million metric tons of annual battery waste generated globally by industries. As examples, I will present a wristband-shape flexible battery that powers a commercial smartwatch (3.7V, 250mAh) that operates as a heart rate monitoring sensor, as well as batteries integrated into a functional textile for powering a commercial accelerometer sensor.

Tom is a recent Stanford graduate currently completing his master’s in biomedical informatics. Due to a bilateral hearing loss, he’s no stranger to critical wearables such as hearing aids and believes wearable solutions hold immense promise in achieving lifestyle parity for people with deafness and other disabilities. He’s worked to improve Deaf/HOH outcomes from multiple angles, including conducting academic research in hearing regeneration, founding Stanford’s first club for the Deaf/HOH, and performing volunteer/advocacy work for hearing loss. In his free time, Tom enjoys running, traveling, and exploring the San Francisco food scene with friends. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-pritsky/