WIN Seminar Series: New technologies for high-performance retina prosthesis based on micro/nano engineering

Thursday, January 16, 2020 10:00 am - 11:00 am EST (GMT -05:00)

The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) is pleased to present a Seminar Series talk by Professor Tianzhun Wu, an associate professor and the founding director of the Research Center of Micro/nano Systems and Bionic Medicine with Shenzhen Insititutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

New technologies for high-performance retina prosthesis based on micro/nano engineering

Abstract

Retinal implants have been intensively developed for several decades to restore the blind eyesight by stimulating the retinal neural cells using biocompatible miniaturized systems. In this talk, major progress of our high-resolution implanted epi-retinal device will be shown. We will focus on flexible micro electrode array (fMEA) with 100+ and 1000+ channels, and its novel surface engineering using responsive biomaterials and various platinum nanostructures. Our experimental results have shown that well-defined micro/nano structure has greatly enhance the electrode performances.

Biography

Tianzhun Wu
Tianzhun Wu received his bachelor and master degree of engineering in 2002 and 2004 respectively from Tsinghua University, China,and pursued his doctoral degree from 2006 to 2009 in the University of Tokyo, Japan. He worked as the postdoctor fellow in the University of Tokyo and Osaka University, then the assistant professor in Sun Yat-sen University. Since 2013 he became the associate professor and the founding director of the Research Center of Micro/nano Systems and Bionic Medicine with Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAT-CAS), and was promoted as the full professor in 2016. He has research experiences of more than 17 years on multi-disciplinary micro/nano materials, fabrication and devices, and his research interests including BioMEMS, MicroTAS and neural engineering. He has published more than 40 SCI papers on famous international journals such as Adv. Mater., J.Mater. Chem., Lab Chip and so on. He has more than 30 granted patents of invention and more than 40 patents of invention pending. The accumulated amount of his research grants exceeded 100 million RMB, and worked as the executive director of the Guangdong Innovation Team and Shenzhen Peacock Team on the next-generation artificial retina. He was awarded the honor of excellent youth of Guangdong Natural Science Foundation and Shenzhen Peacock Personnel (Calibri B Level), and served as the IEEE MEMS TPC member(2018-), youth club chairman of Branch of Digital Medicine, China International Exchange and Promotion Association for Medical and Healthcare (CPAM) , and youth councilman of the Chinese Society of Micro/Nano Technology. He was the executive director and core members of the Guangdong Team and Shenzhen Peacock Team on the next-generation artificial retina.