The late Jack Munushian was a long-time USC professor of electrical engineering and the right-hand man of Zohrab Kaprielian, a storied engineering dean and provost at USC.

Munushian was an innovative distance education pioneer who, utilizing television, began the program that eventually became the Viterbi School’s Distance Education Network. Many of his contributions are still evident in both the Viterbi School and the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering today.

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AY 2022-23 Keynote Speaker

 

John A. Rogers

Director of the Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics

Northwestern University

 

"Transient Bioelectronic Medicines"

 

Friday, February 24, 2023

9:00am – 10:30am, EEB 132

Refreshments will be served

 

Abstract:  A remarkable feature of modern integrated circuit technology is its ability to operate in a stable fashion, almost indefinitely, without physical or chemical change.  Recently developed classes of electronic materials create an opportunity to engineer the opposite outcome, in the form of ‘transient’ devices that dissolve, disintegrate, degrade or otherwise physically disappear at triggered times or with controlled rates.  Water-soluble classes of transient electronic devices serve as the foundations for applications in zero-impact environmental monitors, 'green' consumer electronic gadgetry and bio-resorbable medical implants.  This talk describes the foundational concepts in materials science, electrical engineering and assembly processes for bio/ecoresorbable electronics in a variety of formats and with a range of functions.  Bioresorbable wireless stimulators that accelerate neuroregeneration of injured peripheral nerves and pacemakers that minimize risks after cardiac surgeries represent some recent system level examples.

 

Bio:  Professor John A. Rogers obtained BA and BS degrees in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1989.  From MIT, he received SM degrees in physics and in chemistry in 1992 and the PhD degree in physical chemistry in 1995.  From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows.  He joined Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in 1997 and then served as Director of the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department from the end of 2000 to 2002.  He then spent thirteen years on the faculty at University of Illinois, most recently as the Swanlund Chair Professor and Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.  In the Fall of 2016, he moved to Northwestern University where he is Director of the recently endowed Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics.  He has co-authored nearly 900 papers and his co-inventor on more than 100 patents.  His research has been recognized by many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award for American Ingenuity in the Physical Sciences (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute (2019), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021).  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.