Soft, Epidermal Biosystems for Clinical Diagnostics

Speaker: Prof. Tyler Ray, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2020 at 3:00 to 4:00 pm

Location: Y2E2 Building, room 300, Stanford University

Abstract: Recent advances in materials and mechanics establish novel classes of wearable devices that intimately couple to the soft, curvilinear surfaces of the epidermis. Such thin, ‘skin-like’ devices, nearly physically imperceptible when worn, represent a paradigm shift for obtaining continuous, clinically-relevant physiological data. These devices offer significant potential for personalized medicine applications; however, challenges in materials, sensing methods, and energy storage represent potential impediments to continued progress. Breakthroughs in nanoscale materials (e.g. sensors, high energy storage materials) offer possible solutions; yet, the scalable fabrication and integration of these materials remains an open challenge.

This talk focuses on a class of soft, bio-integrated devices for clinical diagnostics illustrated through two application targets: (1) skin mounted, ‘epidermal’ shunt failure monitors for hydrocephalus patients and (2) epidermal microfluidic devices (‘epifluidics’) for the capture, storage, and biomarker analysis of sweat. It will also introduce a ‘material agnostic’ printing platform as a potential pathway to the scalable assembly of bulk, engineered hierarchical materials from nanoscale components offering a method to control assembly of both microscale and nanoscale components in printed composites — critical for the continued advance of wearable diagnostic devices.

Biography: Tyler R. Ray is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of South Carolina (in 2008 and 2010, respectively) and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2015. Ray received his postdoctoral training as a fellow at Northwestern University in the Rogers Research Group from 2016-2019.  Professor Ray’s research focus is at the intersection of materials science, additive manufacturing, and wearable sensors. He seeks to exploit novel nanoscale properties in multiscale materials for advanced sensors and diagnostic tools. To this end, the group’s current research focus is two fold: (1) the colloidal assembly of multiscale composite materials via acoustic forces and (2) the development of soft, epidermal devices for clinical diagnostics.