Imagine a camera that can electronically image a living bacterial colony without light or a platform that tracks over 65,000 channels of data from retinal neurons firing in real time.
Those are just two of the many projects that Ken Shepard, head of the Bioelectronic Systems Lab, is working on at Columbia Engineering. His group focuses on electronics for biology, more specifically, augmenting integrated circuits to interface with biological systems.
“The Bioelectronic Systems Lab looks to develop new tools that bring electrophysiology into the 21st century to study biological systems at much higher densities of recording that weren’t possible before,” says Shepard, Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering and professor of biomedical engineering. “We augment basic integrated circuit technology with new materials, new devices, new functionalities, and then apply them to novel biological applications.”
Take a look at this video as Shepard explains the breakthrough technology being developed in his lab.