Self-Powered Wearable Sensors for Pervasive Health and Environmental Monitoring
Veena Misra
Director, NSF ERC ASSIST
Distinguished Professor, Department of ECE
North Carolina State University, United States
ABSTRACT
Self-powered wearable sensors devices can not only increase adoption and compliance but also enable long-term and continuous monitoring of many key health and environmental parameters. To achieve this, wearable devices must consist of an appropriate array of multimodal sensors, enable non-invasively, continuous and real-time monitoring, have long operational lifetime to gather long-term data and are comfortable and flexible to ensure adoption by the user. Under the national science foundation funded Center for advanced self-powered systems of integrated sensors and technologies (ASSIST), a team of engineers and scientists are building precisely such devices that are capable of continuous monitoring of personal environment and personal health in a continuous/periodic manner. These features are enabled by ASSIST’s breakthroughs in power management, low power electronics, low power health and environmental sensors and smart textiles all integrated into wearable and comfortable form factors. These features will provide continuous monitoring vs. snapshot measurements performed today and eventually enable longitudinal studies of exposure and health since it does not depend on human diligence for its operation. In this talk, I will discuss how these advances are enabling long-term sensing and effective management of chronic conditions, sensing of personal exposure to air pollutants and toxins and provide longitudinal studies that can provide new insight into correlation of various health and environmental parameters. I will also discuss the role that data will play in making these systems effective for both the patient and the provider.
SPEAKER BIO
Veena Misra is the Director of the National Science Foundation Nanosystems Engineering Research Center on Advanced Self-Powered of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST). She is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University and a 2012 IEEE Fellow. She is also a distinguished lecturer for IEEE Sensors. She received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh. After working at the Advanced Products Research and Development Laboratories, Motorola Inc., Austin, TX she joined the faculty of North Carolina State University in 1998. She has authored or coauthored over 200 papers. Dr. Misra was the recipient of the 2001 National Science Foundation Presidential Early CAREER Award, the 2011 Alcoa Distinguished Engineering Research Award, and 2007 Outstanding Alumni Research Award and the 2016 R.J. Reynolds Award. She also served as the general chair of the 2012 IEEE International Electron Device Meeting.