Thursday, August 11, 2011

Epidermal Electronics / Bioengineering Research in the journal Science



Bioengineering professor Todd Coleman, a new faculty member at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, is an author on a research article in the journal Science entitled "Epidermal Electronics".

A quote from the Jacobs School of Engineering epidermal electronics story is below.

“The brain-machine interface paradigm is very exciting and I think it need not be limited to thinking about prosthetics or people with some type of motor deficit,” said Coleman. “I think taking the lens of the human and computer interacting, and if you could evolve a very nice coupling that is remarkably natural and almost ubiquitous, I think there are applications that we haven’t even imagined. That is what really fascinates me – really the coupling between the biological system and the computer system.”
Coleman co-led the multidisciplinary team that developed the device while working as a professor of electrical and computer engineering and neuroscience at the University of Illinois last year. The device is made of a thin sheet of plastic covered with a water-soluble layer that sticks to skin after washing with water. Once applied, the plastic dissolves, leaving the electronic components imprinted into the skin like a temporary tattoo.