Jacob Robinson (Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Bioengineering at Rice University)

Tens of millions of people suffer from mental health conditions that are not effectively managed with pharmaceuticals. One reason why drugs fail is the fact that mental health disorders often result from dysfunctional neural circuit activity. Bioelectronics that can measure and manipulate these brain states provide a path toward treating disorders with precision and efficacy not possible with drugs. In this talk I will describe wireless power transfer based on magnetoelectric materials that enables state-of-the-art power density and misalignment tolerance. These features allow us to create a robust wireless network of miniature bioelectronic implants that can stimulate and record neural activity. Based on this technology we built the smallest implantable brain stimulator demonstrated in human subjects. We are now moving this technology into a clinical trial through a venture-backed startup Motif Neurotech. Our goal is to create a therapeutic brain computer interface that can treat, track, and prevent mental illness for people who are not getting the care they need from drugs alone.

References:

1. "Miniature battery-free epidural cortical stimulators," J. Woods, et al., Science Advances, (2024).

2. "Miniature battery-free bioelectronics," V. Nair, et al., Science, (2023).

3. “A wireless millimetric magnetoelectric implant for the end vascular stimulation of peripheral nerves,” J. C. Chen, et al., Nature Biomedical Engineering, (2022). 

4. "Magnetoelectric materials for miniature, wireless neural stimulation at therapeutic frequencies," A. Singer, et al., Neuron, 107, 4, 631 (2020).

Jacob Robinson is a Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Bioengineering at Rice University where his group develops miniature technologies to manipulate and monitor physiology and neural circuit activity. Prof. Robinson received a B.S. in Physics from UCLA, a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University, and completed Postdoctoral training in the Chemistry Department at Harvard. He previously served as the co-chair of the IEEE Brain Initiative and a core member of the IEEE Brain Neuroethics working group. He is currently a member of the IEEE EMBS AdCom and a founding member of the Rice Biotech Launchpad. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Robinson is the co-founder and CEO of Motif Neurotech, which is developing a therapeutic brain computer interface to treat mental health disorders. Dr. Robinson is the recipient of a Charles Duncan Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, a Materials Today Rising Star Award.