Inventor Profiles

Research area Hai’s lab focuses on engineering next-generation tools to access the nervous system and accelerate the study of brain function and dysfunction. The research group develops injectable bioelectronic probes that can interact with brain imaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging, and provide brain readouts and stimulation for neurotherapeutics. The lab employs nanofabrication, nanolithography and surface chemistry techniques and combines them with in vitro and in vivo neuroscience towards achieving a broader understanding of the principles underlying neural network activity.

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What excites you about your work? 

“Our lab focuses on disrupting the status quo of neuroscience and neurology, using cutting-edge wireless injectable electronics. We have developed very small components that don’t require wires and harvest power and energy from the outside. We’re getting to a point where we can help patients with neurological disorders without major surgery. We are developing components that work with noninvasive modalities for the entire brain, like MRI. In my lab, we are merging injectable wireless electronics with whole-brain imaging. This has been a major hurdle for neuroscience–recording meaningful signals across the entire brain. We are essentially creating little circuits that operate through MRI, alter the MRI signal, and can be deposited in many different regions of the brain because they’re so small and injectable.”

What do you hope to achieve? 

“We’re hoping now to translate these technologies. We’re part of the Wisconsin Institute for Translational Neuroengineering, co-directed by Kip Ludwig and Justin Williams, and we’re working with their labs on translational work to get our technologies to the clinic or on that path. We patented our main technologies through WARF and can’t thank them enough for their support.”

Aviad and his lab are combining neuroscience with nanotechnology, creating injectable probes to give glimpses into the brain without the risk of traditional surgery. We’re excited to help bring Aviad’s tools to the market.

– Jeanine Burmania, WARF, Senior Director, IP and Licensing