Pratt School of Engineering

Biological Applications

Engineers are often poised to make advances that will have significant impact on many aspects of human life. Faculty in this research subgroup collaborate with other ECE faculty, and with faculty in other departments and in the medical school, to address a wide variety of applications of electrical and computer engineering to biological problems.

Active research topics include:

  • Automatic disease diagnosis using exhaled breath
  • Biological assays
  • Biometric human tracking networks
  • Brain computer interfaces
  • Breast cancer imaging
  • Cochlear implants
  • Early illness prediction using sampled blood
  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging
  • Hearing aids
  • Lab-on-a-chip for medical diagnostics
  • Medical imaging
  • Mobile phone based wireless clinics
  • Nerve fiber impedance prediction
  • RFID for human-computer interaction
  • Smart spaces
  • Tissue spectroscopy
  • Ultrasound image reconstruction

Groups & Labs

Brown Group Lab

Duke Self Assembled Systems Group

Duke Imaging and Spectroscopy Program

Digital Microfluidics Lab

Integrated Nano and Micro Systems

Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility

Statistical Signal Processing Applied to Cochlear Implants and Subsurface Sensing 

Ultra Mixed Signal Lab

Yoshie Research Group

 

Core Faculty

Martin Brooke, Associate Professor, specializes in developing new analog and mixed signal integrated circuits for unconventional applications. His research is characterized by collaborative multi-investigator programs, resulting in significant hardware demonstrators.

April Brown, John Cocke Professor and Sr. Associate Dean for Research, specializes in the synthesis and design of nanostructures to microelectronic devices.

David Brady, Professor, specializes in computational optical sensor systems such as hyperspectral microscopy, Raman spectroscopy for tissue chemometrics, optical coherence sensors and infrared spectral filters.

Lawrence Carin, William H. Younger Professor, specializes in short-pulse scattering, subsurface sensing, and wave-based signal processing.

Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Professor, specializes in the design and testing of nanometer integrated circuits, design of digital microfluidic biochips, circuits and computing systems based on emerging technologies, and wireless/sensor networks.

Leslie Collins, Professor, specializes in physics-based statistical signal processing with applications in remote sensing and auditory prostheses.

Chris Dwyer, Assistant Professor, specializes in DNA self-assembly, nanoscale circuit modeling and fabrication, and computer architecture.

Richard Fair, Professor, specializes in microfluidic systems for lab-on-a-chip applications based on electrowetting technology. He is primarily focused on applications, such as a chip to detect malaria, a chip to do DNA sequencing by synthesis, a chip for printing artificial tissue constructs and live cells. He is also investigating the scaling of chip dimensions from the microliter and nanoliter volumes down to picoliter volumes.

William Joines, Professor, specializes in electromagnetic field and wave interactions with materials and structures.

Nan Marie Jokerst, J.A. Jones Professor, specializes in integrated nanosystems and microsystems with an emphasis on photonic integration for sensing.

Jeff Krolik, Professor, specializes in statistical signal and sensor array processing. Some of his current projects include signal processing algorithm development for over-the-horizon HF radar, passive and active sonar, microwave remote sensing of the marine boundary layer, and robust functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Qing Liu, Professor, specializes in computational electromagnetics and acoustics, inverse problems, subsurface sensing, biomedical imaging, and simulation of photonic and high-speed electronic circuits and devices.

Loren Nolte, Professor, specializes in signal detection and estimation theory with applications to ocean acoustics, biomedical statistical image processing, and optimal decision fusion.

Matt Reynolds, Assistant Professor, specializes in RFID and its application to robotics and human-computer interaction, ultra low power sensing and computation, parasitic power, and smart materials, surfaces, and spaces.

Romit Roy Choudhury, Nortel Networks Assistant Professor, specializes in wireless networking, mobile computing, and distributed systems. He focuses on analysing, designing, and implementing protocols for wireles multihop networks, such as mesh networks, sensor networks, and vehicular networks.

Stacy L Tantum, Assistant Research Professor, specializes in signal processing with applications in remote sensing and ocean acoustics.

Rebecca Willett, Assistant Professor, specializes in compressive optical sensor design, anomaly detection in sensor networks, activity detection in fMRI, and hyperspectral image reconstruction for astronomy and multiphoton microscopy.

Scott D. Wolter, Assistant Research Professor, specializes in Surface and interface engineering, thin films, sensor materials/devices

Gary Ybarra, Professor of the Practice, specializes in microwave imaging.

Tomoyuki Yoshie, Assistant Professor, specializes in nanophotonic approaches to develop novel photonic devices and enhance the performance and functionality of various applications, including computation, communication, and spectroscopy.