ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Dilara Caygara

ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Dilara Caygara

Title: Low-Power Biosensing Platforms with CMOS Mixed-Signal Interfaces for Industrial and Clinical Environments

Presenter: Dilara Caygara

Advisor: Professor Rabia Yazicigil

Chair: TBD

Committee: Professor Rabia Yazicigil, Professor Douglas Densmore, Professor Enrico Bellotti

Google Scholar Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=H5AyQcAAAAAJ&hl=en

Abstract: Continuous monitoring of biological processes in physically constrained and extreme environments presents significant engineering challenges. In industrial settings, tracking dynamic changes within bioreactors requires robust, wireless, and highly sensitive systems to replace bulky probes and offline analysis. Similarly, in clinical applications, acquiring continuous data from the nervous system is often bottlenecked by bulky equipment or episodic, invasive procedures. To address the need for continuous, in situ monitoring across these diverse domains, this research focuses on the design of highly miniaturized, low-power CMOS analog front-ends (AFEs) for advanced bioelectronics. By exploiting advanced CMOS technologies, application-specific AFEs can be realized to support continuous biological monitoring, overcoming critical constraints in power consumption, safety, communication, and form factor.

This prospectus outlines a trajectory of mixed-signal system design across two distinct environments:

Industrial Biomanufacturing: A fully integrated wireless capsule for bioreactor monitoring is presented, featuring a custom-designed potentiostat AFE that enables Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), Cyclic Voltammetry (CV), and Amperometry.

Clinical Neuroelectronics: An architecture for an artifact-tolerant, bidirectional neural interface is explored to address the fundamental bottleneck of simultaneous brain-machine stimulation and recording.

Ultimately, the culmination of these projects will provide a versatile, highly resilient framework for next-generation bio-electronics, bridging the gap between high-performance integrated circuit design and practical, autonomous clinical deployment.