Statement of Objectives

Within the vast ocean of life, we occasionally cast pebbles, small actions that form simple ripples. These ripples act as a catalyst that grow into powerful waves and become self-defining moments in our lives. One such pebble was cast by my parents the day they gifted me the Explorabook, a science book for children. Countless days of my childhood was spent in awe marveling at Moiré spinners, growing bacteria and playing with magnets adventuring through the numerous experiments in the book. It was this memory that I had thought of as I stood on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, sharing my research with the world.

While earning dual bachelor’s degrees in biology and biomedical engineering, I had decided to conduct research with Dr. Kim Cluff in the BIoME lab - a center for computational modeling, medical imaging, and biosensor design. As an NIH K-INBRE scholar, I used machine learning to develop a broad-based optical probing technique using Raman Spectroscopy. Using this method, I found key biomarkers for myopathy in patients with peripheral artery disease, a condition that causes reduced blood flow to the limbs and ultimately amputation if left untreated. This project was exciting because it challenged me to apply non-traditional methods to solve complex medical problems and showed me the wild interdisciplinary nature of biomedical engineering.

My experience in the BIoME lab was transformative: it served as the foundation for the rest of my career and taught me critical lifelong skills in conducting research. In addition to multiple national conferences and first author publications, I gained valuable experience writing grants, IACUC and IRB protocols for my work. Because of my background as a first-generation college student growing up in a low-income family, outreach has always been a significant focus for me. My position in the lab allowed me to form partnerships with local high school students in low income areas as well as those in Upward bound. I involved these students in my research, providing mentorship and guidance for pursuing higher education.

The path to one of the biggest tech conferences in the world began with my research as a graduate student while I worked on my master’s degree in biomedical engineering. After helping to fund a grant with NASA to develop non-invasive biosensors for long duration space flight, I set out to realize this system. It involved designing a passive, lightweight radio frequency (RF) resonant sensor to measure biometrics in the body and the antenna systems to communicate with them. To accomplish this, I also developed an in-house microfabrication technique to make the sensors and conducted human studies to demonstrate their abilities to detect disease. The result of my long nights, relentless passion and a lot of coffee was Cyfive.

Cyfive is a biometric temporary tattoo that non-invasively measures physiological conditions deep within the body. The sensor technology is similar to RFID and addresses many of the movement and penetration depth problems that plague light-based blood flow sensors. What makes Cyfive so unique is the broad array of biometrics it can measure. In addition to continuous heart rate monitoring it can measure changes blood pressure, bone density, intracranial pressure, blood glucose, and cancerous tissues such as melanoma. It is also completely passive and has no components, which lends itself to wildly innovative outcomes when designing form factors for the sensor. While smart skin patches and tattoos are my primary research focus, I have also screen printed conductive designs into clothing and started integrating it into home assistants for a more fluid IoT-driven experience.

During my master’s degree, I worked with two other students at WSU to commercialize our research in Dr. Cluff’s lab. After six months of cutting our teeth on local business competitions, we were gaining interest from Y-Combinator and won a national grand prize to attend the Red Bull Launch Institute where we received personal mentoring and training with Fahrenheit 212, a global innovation and design firm. All our hard work paid off and we were featured in Forbes and CGTV among other press outlets to share our work with the world.

My experience with Fahrenheit 212 fundamentally shifted how I perceived innovation and design thinking. After training with them, I performed a deep dive of critical insights about the inner workings of eldercare, an exploration that lead to a profound realization of the true impact this technology could have in the senior community. We all get old, and we all have parents that need care in their later years, yet assistive tools in this area have been extremely lacking. For caregivers, checking on seniors that suffer from dementia or that have poor communication can be extremely stressful; providing a system that could facilitate routine changes and improve the relationship between the caregiver and senior could alleviate many of these problems.

Thinking about how seniors would want to use technology is where the ideations of developing meaningfully connected systems started to form. While some people may be knowledgeable about more common biometrics such as heart rate or blood pressure, how would continuously monitoring biometrics such as blood pressure or blood glucose alter our daily routine, diet or even our medication dosage? Our biometrics are inherently tied to both our physical and emotional state, yet until recently we have done little to truly explore this connection.

As we approach the technological singularity, humans have slowly been integrating themselves with technology. We see this every day; a runner tracking their heart rate, a mother asking google home to schedule a babysitter, a high schooler livestreaming their everyday lives. I seek to contribute to this cultural shift by further connecting us with flexible, wearable electronics and how biometrics are connected to emotional wellness. However, as our connection to this platform grows deeper, society will start shifting their interests from outside of the body to inward. To that end, I propose a new generation of in vivo injectable microsystems and diagnostic nanorobotics that will revolutionize how individuals will monitor their health. This cultural time perception shift is the spark that will drive a new epoch in human-computer symbiosis by creating a platform that utilizes these connections that we have with technology in meaningful ways to our lives.