Prestigious Women Researchers Lecture Series | Pamela Abshire: 'BioChips: Leveraging Integrated Circuits for Sensing, Medicine, and Science'

The remarkable success of microelectronics over the past decades has been driven by continuous advances in miniaturisation and integration, enabling entirely new scientific, technological and biomedical applications. In this lecture, Pamela Abshire will introduce lab-on-CMOS (LoCMOS) systems, an emerging technology that combines sensing, signal processing and actuation capabilities within highly integrated microsystems.

The talk will provide an overview of the principles and applications of LoCMOS technology, with a particular focus on LoCMOS capacitance imagers, a novel sensing modality capable of monitoring living cells in culture by measuring the electrical coupling between cells and electrodes embedded in a CMOS substrate. This approach makes it possible to observe important cellular phenomena —including adhesion, proliferation, motility, cell division and drug responses— without the need for chemical labels.

The lecture will also discuss the challenges involved in integrating diagnostic sensors into biomedical devices, including packaging, sterilisation, communication and power management. In this context, capacitance imaging and LoCMOS technologies offer promising opportunities for the development of a new generation of biosensors and medical diagnostic tools.

About the speaker

Pamela Abshire is Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stony Brook University (USA). She received a BS in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and earned both her MS and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Between those academic stages, she worked for the biomedical device company Medtronic. Prior to joining Stony Brook, she served as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Internationally recognised for her contributions to CMOS biosensors, low-power mixed-signal integrated circuits and adaptive electronic systems, her research explores the integration of microelectronics, MEMS, optoelectronics, microfluidics and biological components to create novel sensing technologies. She has authored more than 150 scientific publications and holds three patents. Her distinctions include an NSF CAREER Award, elevation to IEEE Fellow for contributions to CMOS biosensors, and recognition as a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland.