Early Career Excellence: Professor Rabia Yazicigil Recognized By NSF and BU College of Engineering
by Lea Rivel
Professor Rabia Yazicigil’s outstanding contributions have been doubly recognized, with the recent conferral of a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Early Career Excellence in Research Award from the BU College of Engineering.
Her NSF-award-winning project, entitled “Secure Miniaturized Bio-Electronic Sensors for Real-Time In-Body Monitoring,” focuses on real-time in-body monitoring of inflammatory processes in the gastrointestinal tract. The current standard for monitoring the GI tract relies on invasive endoscopic biopsies or non-real-time stool analysis. She aims to develop “inexpensive and non-invasive miniaturized ingestible sensors that will enable real-time and accurate tracking of disease progression in a home setting while protecting confidential medical information.”
A continuation of her groundbreaking research in collaboration with colleagues at MIT, the project will create the first-of-its-kind secure hybrid bio-electronic sensors, thereby establishing the field of Cyber-Secure Biological Systems (CSBS). The new field of CSBS not only has the potential to significantly transform research in medicine and environmental science, but also to address other societal challenges such as gaining insights into internal bodily events, facilitating early detection of water contamination crises, and supporting sustainable manufacturing practices.
The Early Career Excellence in Research Award from the College of Engineering recognizes outstanding achievements in establishing an impactful research program early in one’s career. Per the award committee, Yazicigil’s “interdisciplinary approach to addressing societal challenges at the intersection of human health, environmental monitoring, and semiconductor technologies” truly sets her apart. She has pioneered the development of cyber-secure biological systems that combine the benefits of biology with the reliability and communication infrastructure of electronics. She has also conducted research on all-in-one (universal) data decoders for energy-efficient wireless communications.
Professor Yazicigil’s work spans multiple domains from integrated circuits and chip design, biosensing architectures, wireless communication systems, and physical-layer security. Her research has been funded by federal agencies such as DARPA, private foundations (Helmsley Charitable Trust, Catalyst Foundation), the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), companies such as Analog Devices, and the academic/industry collaboration-driven BioMADE/Schmidt Sciences Bioreactor Innovation Program. Recently, she was selected as an IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lecturer and elected to the IEEE SSCS AdCom as a Member-at-Large. She was the recipient of the BU ECE department’s Outstanding Faculty Service Award in 2021, and was named a Sabanci University Engineering/Academy US Ambassador in 2020. Yazicigil earned a Columbia University Electrical Engineering Collaborative Research Award for interdisciplinary Ph.D. thesis research in 2016, and earned her doctorate that same year.