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Biosystems

Overview

Biosystems research in UW’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering is a highly collaborative endeavor. Our faculty focus on four areas of Biosystems research: synthetic & systems biology, neural engineering, biomedical devices, and mobile health. Many of our faculty hold secondary appointments and work closely with collaborators from other departments including Bioengineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Biology, Genome Sciences, Applied Mathematics, and the UW Medical Center. Our Biosystems faculty work with many cross-disciplinary institutes such as the eScience Institute, the NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, the Institute for Protein Design, the Bloedel Hearing Research Center and the University of Washington Institute for Neuroengineering.

Topics

Synthetic Biology

Biotechnology, macromolecular engineering tools, advanced materials, genetic engineering, computer aided design, laboratory automation, DNA/RNA sequence assembly, information theory and machine learning for genomics applications.

Faculty: Eric KlavinsGeorg SeeligSreeram KannanJeff Bilmes

Neural Engineering

Neural Control, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Neural Security, Device control, spinal cord rehabilitation, neural signaling, neuromechanics and computational neuroscience.

Faculty:  Blake HannafordHoward Jay ChizeckSam BurdenEli ShlizermanJoshua R. SmithVisvesh Sathe, Azadeh Yazdan-ShamoradAmy OrsbornChet Moritz

Medical Devices

Design of biomedical devices including research and clinical neural interfaces, diagnostic devices, wearable sensors, and embedded processing and wireless communication links for biomedical devices.

Faculty: Babak ParvizShwetak N. PatelJoshua R. SmithMatt ReynoldsVisvesh SatheJacques Christophe RudellBlake HannafordHoward Jay ChizeckLes AtlasAzadeh Yazdan-Shamorad, Amy OrsbornChet Moritz

Mobile Health

Development of new health monitoring, diagnostics, and health management applications and tools using emerging mobile devices and sensors. Research in this area applies advances in imaging, app development, physiological modeling, statistical algorithms, and machine learning. This work has implications for home health monitoring and low-resource environments.

Faculty: Shwetak N. PatelJoshua R. SmithMatt ReynoldsLinda G. Shapiro

Latest News

https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/the-integrator-2023-2024/

The Integrator 2023–2024

Read the latest issue of The Integrator, UW ECE’s flagship, annual publication intended for alumni and friends of the Department. The magazine highlights the UW ECE community and covers stories about extraordinary students and their achievements, faculty research and discoveries, alumni news, events and more!

https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/chip-for-wireless-communication/

A new kind of chip for wireless communication

A UW ECE research team led by Professor Chris Rudell has designed an innovative computer chip that can send and receive large amounts of data at high speeds while minimizing signal distortion and conserving the limited spectrum available for wireless communication.

https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/gary-bernard/

An engineer who sees the world through butterfly eyes

UW ECE affiliate professor and alumnus Gary D. Bernard (BSEE ‘59, MSEE ‘60, Ph.D. ‘64) has had a long, successful engineering career in academia and industry. He has also produced an impressive amount of research exploring how butterflies view and adapt to their environment.

https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/welcome-choi-naghavi/
https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/orsborn-nih-grant/
https://www.ece.uw.edu/spotlight/uw-ece-chips-and-science-act/

UW ECE and the CHIPS and Science Act

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 is making historic investments in semiconductor research, workforce development and manufacturing. Learn how UW ECE is prepared and well-positioned to leverage these opportunities.

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Researchers

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