Shreyas Sen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering

A proposal from Shreyas Sen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, will allow further exploration of the using the human body as a wire for healthcare. The research will be funded through a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

This five-year-long award will support furthering Professor Sen’s research on research on Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication, exploring new modalities, theoretical foundations and new applications with the goal to develop Connected Intelligent Sensor Nodes with the potential to transform healthcare.

“Using electromagnetic signals for communication around the Human Body means security risks of snooping and higher-energy consumption,” says Sen. “Instead we propose to use the human body as a ‘wire’ to communicate from in-body devices, like pacemaker, to on-body devices, like smartwatch, making these devices physically secure with only fraction of energy.”

Using the ‘Human Body as a Wire’ allows enhanced Physical Security (as the communication signals does not radiate outside the body) and >100x better energy-efficiency compared to Electromagnetic Communication (such as Bluetooth) around the human body. This invention has been also recognized by the MIT TR35 India Award, TEDx Indianapolis, CNBC TV, Silicon Flatirons, among many others. IEEE Spectrum recently highlighted this technology as a possible solution to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warning on medical devices connectivity vulnerability.

The NSF CAREER Award is given in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

Prof. Sen is also a recipient of the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (YIP), NSF CRII Award and Google Faculty Research Award (FRA).