Keynote Speakers
Title 1: “Neural and Tissue Electrical Stimulation and Acquisition Electronics"
Prof. Omid Shoaei
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Tehran, Iran
Abstract:
Implantable neural electrical stimulators can be used to treat a variety of neurological disorders and/or restore some body functions such as DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) for Parkinson disease, SCS (Spinal Cord Stimulation) for chronic pain, Cochlear Implants for stimulating cochlear nerves for inner hearing loss, Epiretinal prosthesis for treating retinal degenerative diseases, etc. Also, in cardiac pacemakers and ICD’s an electrical impulse can depolarize cardiac tissue near the pacing electrode, which then propagates through the heart to restore a normal cardiac rhythm. Neural signal recording and bio-impedance spectroscopy are essential for efficient closed-loop treatment. In the meantime, concurrent stimulation and recording remain a challenge for high-dynamic range AFE requirement as well as the overall system power constraints.
The power efficiency and safety of the electrical stimulators are uncompromisable. Also, the characteristics of the stimulator such as the voltage compliance, and current/voltage resolution are among the design challenges defining the ASIC technology node. Some charge balancer circuits and systems particularly for multipolar stimulators to ensure the electrical stimulation safe for both the tissue and the electrode are presented. Multi-channel concurrent stimulation and generating different waveforms to increase the efficacy are also discussed. Different types of neural stimulation circuitries are introduced, and as an example, an energy efficient multichannel adiabatic switching-based stimulator with high driving current capability (up to 10 mA) is presented in more details. Also, some techniques for Neural signal recording and bio-impedance spectroscopy are presented.
Biography:
Omid Shoaei (M’96) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Tehran, Iran, in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in 1996, all in electrical engineering. In 1995, he was with Philsar Electronics, Inc., Ottawa, working on the design of a bandpass delta-sigma data converter. From December 1995 to February 2000, he was a Member of Technical Staff with Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Allentown, PA, USA, where he was involved in the design of mixed analog/digital integrated circuits for LAN and Fast Ethernet systems. From February 2000 to March 2003, he was with the Design Center, Valence Semiconductor, Inc., Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as the Director of the Mixed-Signal Group, where he has been working on pipelined and delta-sigma analog-to-digital converters. From January 2008 to February 2012, he was Qualcomm, San Diego, CA, USA, where he was the chip lead and a supervisor of a team of about 20 designers for two codec development projects for smart phone, and tablet OEMs. Since January 2014, he has been the Principal Investigator of the Deep Brain Stimulator (DBS) Project supported by the CSTC. He is currently working on the development of a new IC generation for DBS with the University of Tehran. He has also been an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, since 1999. He has received three U.S. patents, and has authored or coauthored more than 180 international and national journal and conference publications. His research interests include biomedical integrated circuits and systems, analog-to-digital converters, precision analog/mixed-signal circuits and systems, and automotive electronics.
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Title 2: “Research Directions in RF and High-Speed Circuits”
Prof. Behzad Razavi
Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Biography:
Behzad Razavi (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.S. degree from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 1985, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 1988 and 1992, respectively, all in electrical engineering. He was an Adjunct Professor with Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, from 1992 to 1994, and with Stanford University in 1995. He was with AT&T Bell Laboratories and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories until 1996. Since 1996, he has been an Associate Professor and subsequently a Professor of electrical engineering with the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. He has authored Principles of Data Conversion System Design (IEEE Press, 1995), RF Microelectronics (Prentice Hall, 1998, 2012) (translated to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits (McGraw-Hill, 2001, 2016) (translated to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Design of Integrated Circuits for Optical Communications (McGraw-Hill, 2003, Wiley, 2012), Design of CMOS Phase-Locked Loops (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Fundamentals of Microelectronics (Wiley, 2006, 2014, 2021) (translated to Korean, Portuguese, and Turkish), and is the Editor of Monolithic Phase-Locked Loops and Clock Recovery Circuits (IEEE Press, 1996) and Phase-Locking in High-Performance Systems (IEEE Press, 2003). His research interests include wireless and wireline transceivers and data converters. Dr. Razavi is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors. He received the Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence at the 1994 ISSCC, the Best Paper Award at the 1994 European Solid-State Circuits Conference, the Best Panel Award at the 1995 and 1997 ISSCC, the TRW Innovative Teaching Award in 1997, the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference in 1998, and the McGraw-Hill First Edition of the Year Award in 2001. He was the co-recipient of both the Jack Kilby Outstanding Student Paper Award and the Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence at the 2001 ISSCC. He received the Lockheed Martin Excellence in Teaching Award in 2006, the UCLA Faculty Senate Teaching Award in 2007, and the CICC Best Invited Paper Award in 2009 and 2012. He was a co-recipient of the 2012 and 2015 VLSI Circuits Symposium Best Student Paper Awards and the 2013 CICC Best Paper Award. He was also recognized as one of the top ten authors in the 50-year history of ISSCC. He received the 2012 Donald Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits. He was also a recipient of the American Society for Engineering Education PSW Teaching Award in 2014 and the 2017 IEEE CAS John Choma Education Award. He has served as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He served on the Technical Program Committees of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) from 1993 to 2002 and the VLSI Circuits Symposium from 1998 to 2002. He has also served as a Guest Editor and an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, and International Journal of High Speed Electronics. He served as the Founding Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters.
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Title 3: “Intelligent Imagers and Vision Chips”
Prof. Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez
Institute of Microelectronics of Seville (IMSE-CNM)
Seville, Spain
Biography:
Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in physics-electronics from the University of Seville (US), Seville, Spain, in 1982. After staying at the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, and Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, he became a Full Professor of electronics at the US in 1995. He co-founded the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, Seville, and started a Research Laboratory on Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits for Sensors and Communications. He has always been looking for a balance between long-term research and industrial innovation. In 2001, he was the main promotor of Teledyne-Anafocus, Seville, and served as the CEO until June 2009, when the company reached maturity as a worldwide provider of smart CMOS imagers. He also participated in the foundation of the Hungarian start-up AnaLogic Ltd. He has ten patents filed; AnaFocus started based on his patents on vision chip architectures. His research embraces smart imagers, vision chips, and biomedical circuits, always with an emphasis on system integration. His laboratory designed many high-performance mixed-signal chips in the framework of Spanish, European, and USA research and development programs. These included three generations of vision chips, analog front-ends for XDSL MoDems, analog-to-digital conversions (ADC) for wireless communications, ADCs for automotive sensors, chaotic signals generators, and complete MoDems for power-line communications. Dr. Rodríguez-Vázquez received several awards, including the IEEE Rogelio Segovia Torres Award in 1981. His publications have some 9900 citations and several awards: the IEEE Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award, two Wiley’s International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications (IJCTA) Best Paper Awards, two IEEE European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design (ECCTD) Best Paper Awards, one IEEE-ISCAS Best Paper Award, one Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, Information Society Technologies (SPIE-IST) Electronic Imaging Best Paper Award, the IEEE ISCAS Best Demo-Paper Award, and the IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS) Best Demo-Paper Award. He chaired several international IEEE (NDES 1996, CNNA 1996, ECCTD 2007, ESSCIRC 2010, and ICECS 2013) and SPIE conferences. He served as the VP for Region 8 of IEEE CASS from 2009 to 2012 and as Chair for the IEEE CASS Fellow Evaluation Committee in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. He was the General Co-Chair of IEEE ISCAS 2020. He also served as the Editor for IEEE and non-IEEE journals and is on the committee of several international journals and conferences.
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Lecture slides of Prof. Angel Rodriguez-Vazquez
Title 4: “Neuromorphic Architecture-based Neuromodulation for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Brain Disorders”
Mohamad Sawan, FIEEE, FRSC, FCAE
Chair Professor, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China
Emeritus Professor, Polytechnique, University of Montreal, Canada
Abstract:
Closed-Loop Systems intended for efficient diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases are targets to mimic brain regular operation. Consequently, neuromorphic based learning techniques are the heart parts of emerging control units to be embedded in proposed Neuromodulation Systems. This talk covers the implementation ofwearable and implantable medical devices based on custom system-on-chip (SoC) integrated platforms. The latter are intended for the diagnosis, treatment, and prediction of health conditions. These devices include signal processing methods, design and tests of SoCs and system assembly of bioelectronic closed-loop systems for brain interfaces.These methods deal with multidimensional design challenges such as efficient power management, very low-power and high-data rate wireless communication methods, and reliable systems. In these neuromodulation applications, priority could be given to non-invasive approaches, however for some healthcare dysfunctions, wearable systems can not apply, implantable devices should be used. Also, optoelectronic methods are becoming the winning approaches to build proposed advanced closed-loop systems for both non-invasive nanoimaging, and transcranial stimulation. Case studies include several applications such as epilepsy, vision, addictions, and early and fast viruses detection.
Biography:
Mohamad Sawan is Chair Professor in Westlake University, Hangzhou, China, and Emeritus Professor in Polytechnique Montreal, Canada. He is founder and director of the Center of Excellence in Biomedical Research on Advanced Integrated-on-chips Neurotechnologies (CenBRAIN Neurotech) in Westlake University, Hangzhou, China. Also, he is founder of the Polystim Neurotech Laboratory in Polytechnique Montréal. He received the Ph.D. degree from University of Sherbrooke, Canada. Dr. Sawan research activities are bridging micro/nano electronics with biomedical engineering to introduce smart medical devices dedicated to improving the quality of human life. He is co-founder and was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (2016-2019). He hosted the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, and the 2020 IEEE International Medicine, Biology and Engineering Conference (EMBC). He was a Canada Research Chair in Smart Medical Devices (2001-2015), and was leading the Microsystems Strategic Alliance of Quebec, Canada (1999-2018). Dr. Sawan published more than 1000 peer reviewed papers and many books and patents. Among the numerous received honors, Dr. Sawan received the Chinese National Friendship Award, The Lebanese’s President Medal of Merit, the Shanghai International Collaboration Award, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal. Dr. Sawan is Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the IEEE, and “Officer” of the National Order of Quebec.
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