Zhang, Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, won 2nd place for his poster entitled “Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles as a Platform for Wireless Brain Machine Interfaces” at Puzzle X, a futuristic international tech conference held in Barcelona this past November.
When asked about what drives him, Zhang said, “It’s really important to me that my research makes people’s lives better.”
A family of scientists
“My parents say it was obvious since I was really little that I’d become an engineer,” Zhang said. “I always liked math and building things. They had a subscription to Scientific American, so I’d read that every day, even back in middle school.”
Zhang joked about the influence his parents have had on his chosen career. “In college, I used to say that I wanted to do anything besides what my parents do. My mom’s in neurosurgery and my dad’s an electrical engineer. Now I always joke that, in the last ten years, I’ve somehow tripped and fallen into a career exactly in the middle of their fields.”
What brought him to Miami Engineering
At UCLA, Zhang studied materials science and engineering. As an undergrad, he became heavily involved in nanoparticle design, securing an internship at a startup focused on commercializing the basic engineering concepts developed through the research partnership between Sakhrat Khizroev, Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Miami College of Engineering, and Ping Liang, Professor-Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Khizroev soon became Zhang’s mentor, encouraging him to pursue a Ph.D. with him at the College. Zhang moved to Miami and, in his very first visit to the city, made the mistake of wearing a wool suit in the dead of summer when going to see Khizroev in his office. “I still remember pacing around the first floor of the engineering building trying to cool down in the A/C before the meeting with Dr. Khizroev.”
His award-winning research
On the research that won him the international prize last month, Zhang said, “For the last three years, with funding from NSF and DARPA, we’ve been working to create a new, wireless way to connect to the brain. Something we call magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENPs) can allow a completely wireless relationship with the brain, replacing today’s invasive, surgically-intensive approaches to stimulating the brain.
“We envision a patient with Parkinson’s, for example, being able to sit in a medical room for an hour. Particles would go in the right locations, you’d put a device on the outside of your head, and you’d be good to go. We’re also interested in using MENPs to treat paralysis and spinal cord injury, which is why we work with the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Another long-term goal is advanced prosthetics–MENPs could help us create prosthetics that respond almost as fast as natural limbs to commands and stimuli.”
The details of his research are described in a recent peer-reviewed paper in a high impact journal.
Zhang’s poster, which won him second place at the international conference, is titled “Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles as a Platform for Wireless Brain Machine Interfaces.”
