Events Calendar

EE-EP Seminar - Jun-Chau Chien, Friday, March 4th in EEB 132 at 2:00pm

Speaker: Jun-Chau Chien, University of California, Berkeley

Talk Title: mm-Wave Lab-on-CMOS: Electromagnetic Sensing from Micro-to Nano-scales

Abstract: Lab-on-CMOS is an emerging platform for Point-of-Care diagnostics and precision medicine. By directly integrating active CMOS electronics into passive Lab-on-Chip devices, the new System-on-Chip not only offers ultimate device miniaturization but also enables highly integrated multiphysics biosensing and actuation. This research addresses the challenges in such a hybrid system while embracing the opportunities in system co-design to achieve improved sensing performance that leads to new scientific findings.

In this talk, I will present my research on a Lab-on-CMOS dielectric spectrometer for single-cell analysis using near-field sensing at millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) frequencies. The aim is to understand the wideband electromagnetic signatures at cellular and molecular levels and to open its way for real-time and label-free medical diagnostics and biological studies. I will focus on innovations in circuits, systems, microfluidics, and calibration techniques to enable a capacitance equivalent sensitivity limit of sub-aF, suitable for large-scale characterization of single-cell dielectric spectroscopy (6.5 ~ 30 GHz) in the setting of high-throughput flow cytometry. The capability of cell sorting based on frequency dispersion is demonstrated with the measurements of human breast cancer cells. In addition to electromagnetic sensing, I will introduce multiphysics actuation techniques to quantify the mechanical property of the cells. Specifically, the system measures the deformation of cells using hydrodynamic stretching. I will also discuss the challenges in sensing toward nano-scales and sub-THz frequencies and present an on-chip single-element electronic calibration (E-Cal) technique for nano-device measurements. In the end, I will conclude my talk with Lab-on-CMOS technology for new applications in sensing, imaging, and communication.


Biography: Jun-Chau Chien received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2004 and 2006, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from University of California, Berkeley, in 2015. He is currently a post-doctoral research associate at University of California, Berkeley. He has held industrial positions at InvenSense, Xilinx, and HMicro working on mixed-signal integrated circuits for inertial sensors and wireline/wireless transceivers. He is broadly interested in innovative biotechnology for point-of-care diagnostics and medical imaging with emphasis on silicon-based approaches.
Dr. Chien is the recipient of the 2006 Annual Best Thesis Award from Graduate Institute of Electronics Engineering, National Taiwan University, the 2007 International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) Silkroad Award, the co-recipient of 2010 IEEE Jack Kilby Award for ISSCC Outstanding Student Paper, the 2014 Analog Devices Outstanding Design Award, the 2014 Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Graduate Fellowship for Medical Applications, the 2014 Solid-State Circuit Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award, and the 2014 UC Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award.


Host: EE-Electrophysics

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Marilyn Poplawski