ARO/NSF/SRC Technical Exchange Meeting - Cell-Semiconductor Interfaces and Hybrid Semiconductor-Biological Systems (invitation only)

Venue

Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center
800 Spring Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30308

NOTE: Hotel accommodations have been secured for all confirmed participants by the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center.  If you have not received an e-mail confirmation, please contact leslie.faiers@src.org.

Directions

to Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center

From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport:

• Head west on South Terminal Pkwy ◾Make a slight right onto Airport Blvd.
• Take the I-75/I-85/I-20/GA-403/Camp Creek Pkwy ramp to Atlanta
• Keep left at the fork and continue toward GA-403 North/I-85 North
• Keep left at the fork and follow signs for I-85/GA-403
• Merge onto GA-403 North/I-85 North
• Take Exit 250 toward 10th Street/14th Street
• Merge onto Williams Street NW
• Turn right at 10th Street NW
• Turn right at Spring Street NW
• Hotel is on the right at 800 Spring Street NW (at the corner of 5th Street and Spring Street)

From the South:

• Using I-85 North or I-75 North
• Take Exit 250 toward 10th Street/14th Street
• Merge onto Williams Street NW ◾Turn right at 10th Street NW
• Turn right at Spring Street NW
• Hotel is on the right at 800 Spring Street NW (at the corner of 5th Street and Spring Street)

From the North:

• Take I-75 South (if using I-85, take that to I-75 South)
• Take Exit 250 toward 10th Street/14th Street
• Stay straight past 14th St until 10th Street (next intersection)
• Turn left on 10th Street
• Turn right at Spring Street NW
• Hotel is on the right at 800 Spring Street NW (at the corner of 5th Street and Spring Street)

Things to Do

Information on area attractions near the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center can be found at http://www.gatechhotel.com/fox-theater-georgia-en.html.

Nearby Restaurants

Restaurants close to the GA Tech Hotel and Conference Center

Purpose

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in hybrid biological-semiconductor platforms that can leverage both natural/synthetic biological processes and semiconductor technologies (Fig. 1). In such hybrid platforms, living cells and tissues can function as a “Biological Front-End” layer with the cellular biochemical processes serving as an organic interface to the external environment and performing biological sensing, actuation, signal processing, synthesis, and energy harvesting. In parallel, the underlying semiconductor platforms can form a “Semiconductor Back-End” layer for information computation, control, communication, storage, and energy supply. Most importantly, if reliable two-way communication schemes, for both information and energy, are achieved between the “Biological Front-End” and “Semiconductor Back-End” with a high spatiotemporal resolution and massively parallel operations, one can expect that a hybrid biotic-abiotic feedback system can be created.

The hybrid biology-semiconductor systems can be employed in a broad spectrum of critical applications with ground-breaking scientific, economical, and societal impacts. Leveraging the built-in or synthetically programmed cellular machineries and their interactions with semiconductor platforms, these hybrid systems will potentially offer unprecedented capabilities far beyond conventional electronics-only devices. For example, advances in this field could stimulate developments of self-powered Intelligent Sensor Systems that integrate biological sensing functions and energy generation with inorganic information/computation capabilities enable diverse new applications. Example applications include fast and high-throughput chemical screening for drug discovery, diagnosis and therapy planning for personalized medicine, detecting chemical and biological agents for defense and environmental needs, and novel microscopic biological actuators or robots.

Current research on such hybrid biological-semiconductor platforms is still in its stage of infancy, and one of the major challenges in such hybrid biology-semiconductor systems lies in the information/energy interface between the cellular “Biological Front-End” layer and the “Semiconductor Back-End” layer. These technological challenges that must be addressed to develop such a hybrid system are daunting and encompass almost every facet of VLSI, nano-electronics, and bioengineering technologies. The meeting participants will examine these essential technologies from the point of view of what near-term advances may be achievable through focused investment in high-risk, high-reward applied research in the area of hybrid bioelectronics microsystems. This meeting will develop future research agendas with a particular focus on the interactions between the nano-electronics and the biological layers, which will enable the next-step scientific explorations on hybrid biological/nano-electronic devices/systems and insure the Nation long-term uncontested technology leadership. This meeting is also designed to identify and roadmap the technology capabilities that are needed to enable the production and deployment of hybrid biological-semiconductor microsystems by 2022.

Format

This is an invitation-only meeting where all the attendees are expected to actively participate. The 1.5-day technical exchange meeting will be constructed to include selected overview presentations and panel discussions. It will encourage and enable interactions by allotting sufficient time for in-depth panel-participant interactions. Participants will be asked to identify technologies and capabilities that may only be achievable through large, focused investment by funding agencies on both fundamental and applied research.

Outcome

A detailed technical report will be generated resulting from the inputs gathered at the technical exchange meeting that will be useful in describing promising research directions. Successful execution of this meeting will be used to inform the strategic funding priorities and planning of multiple government and industry funding agencies.

Session 1: Hybrid cell-microelectronics systems for sensing, actuation, synthesis and computation

1. Biological computation is extremely energy efficient, while electronics offers fast and easily programmable computations. How can we build a hybrid computer utilizing interface between the biological layer and electronic layer? What are the high-impact applications?
2. What is the potential for fine-grained control of physical transport (e.g., fluids, cells, subcellular components, genetic vectors)? What electronic device structures are needed; can biological components be incorporated?
3. What is your 5/10-year vision and 20-year vision for this area of hybrid cell-microelectronics systems for sensing, actuation, synthesis and computation?

Session 2: Real-time bilateral interface between semiconductor platforms and biology

1. What is the spatial resolution and scaling limit of the semiconductor-cell interfacing?
2. Is it possible to insert untethered semiconductor/electronic “dielets” with active circuits into cells? What potential functionalities these in-cell semiconductor/electronic “dielets” may achieve?
3. What is your 5/10-year vision and 20-year vision for this area of real-time bilateral interface between semiconductor platforms and biology?

Session 3: Handling, processing, and maintaining cellular samples on semiconductor surfaces

1. Keeping cells alive on semiconductor surfaces becomes a challenging task to form a hybrid bio-semiconductor system. What is the current lifetime expectation and can we further extend the lifetime for different living cells (e.g., bacteria, yeast, mammalian)? What is the fundamental and practical limits?
2. Long-term reliability of the nano-electronic interfaces in the biologically relevant environment is critical, such as thin dielectrics and nano-sized electrodes in cell culture medium. Any suggestion in terms of the packaging and post-processing?
3. Cell handling and multiplexing is a critical aspect to assemble a hybrid and heterogeneous bio-semiconductor system. What is the status of 3D bio-printing (cell types, spatial resolution, volume resolution/cell count)? What is the current performance limitation and how to overcome them?
4. What is your 5/10-year vision and 20-year vision for this area of cell sample handling, processing, and maintaining?

Session 4: Energy exchange between the cells/biological machineries and the microelectronic systems ― Sustainable Energy Source.

1. What is the state of the art power density (e.g., power/area) that can be harvested from biological energy sources? What is the fundamental/practical limitation here? Is it possible to aggressively improve this power density metric for microbial fuel cells over the next 5-10 years?
2. Can we utilize the energy fluxes that flow from microelectronics to the cells, which could impact biological function? For example, can cellular respirations be supported by electronic power?
3. What is your 5/10-year vision and 20-year vision for this area of energy exchange between biology and electronics?

Session 5. Brainstorming: Synthetic biology for hybrid cell-electronics systems

1. Can we identify high-impact (scientific, societal, economic) application opportunities for hybrid cell-electronic systems?
2. Any high-impact opportunities that may arise from Synthetic Biology concepts to provide directions/inspiration for future semiconductor technologies? Any high-impact opportunities that may arise from nano-electronics systems to support/enable the research and commercialization of synthetic biology technologies?
3. Please suggest government agencies and companies who might be interested in funding a collaborative university research initiative in these related areas.

Session 1: Hybrid cell-microelectronics systems for sensing, actuation, synthesis and computation

Hybrid biological-semiconductor systems that deliver two-way multi-modal interrogation and sensing capabilities will enable a plethora of high-impact applications, including low-cost drug development, chemical screening, environment monitoring, and synthesis of organic/inorganic materials and structures.

As two-way real-time multi-modal cell-microelectronics communication interfaces are realized, hybrid biological-semiconductor platforms can seek to integrate organic/in-organic signal processing and hybrid computation. In the hybrid biological-semiconductor platform, the “Semiconductor Back-End” will perform complex, high-speed, and reprogrammable computations and information storage to enhance the computation in the synthetic “Biological Front-End.” In parallel, besides their built-in computations, the synthetic “Biological Front-End” will offer information pre-processing (sensing and filtering) and post-processing (actuation and synthesis of bio-product) for the “Semiconductor Back-End.” Seamless organic/in-organic signal processing can potentially realize self-regulated operations between “Biological Front-End” and “Semiconductor Back-End,” which may enable fine-grained controls of cellular physiological environment and benefit large-scale cell biology applications.

Session 2: Real-time bilateral interface between semiconductor platforms and biology

Cells are highly complex systems that often exhibit multi-physics responses under external stimulus. This session will focus on technologies for creating interfaces that can provide (a) single-cell (<5-10μm/pixel) or sub-cell resolution (<1μm/pixel), (b) real-time two-way communication (sensing and actuation by both cells and microelectronics), (c) multi-modality interfacing with cells, (d) compatibility with high throughput massively parallel operations, and (e) possibility of production at commercial quantities.

The nanometer-scale complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process is a potential candidate to realize cell-microelectronics interfaces. Electronics-based computations and signal processing, such as application of machine learning methods, may drastically relax the requirement on the physical interface and lead to further pixel miniaturization. In parallel, optoelectronics for interfacing with cells/tissues and various emerging technologies, such as nano-pores, silicon nanowires, and graphene biosensors, may greatly augment the CMOS.

Session 3: Handling, processing, and maintaining cellular samples on semiconductor surfaces

This session focus on the technologies to manipulate living cells and tissues and assemble them on a semiconductor surface. These technologies should potentially support high-throughput, scalability and low-cost implementation/operation. Also, among the challenges to implementation of cell-semiconductor systems is maintaining cell viability on silicon: Live cells will be integrated with CMOS technology to form a hybrid bio-semiconductor system, and keeping cells alive on silicon is a critical task for the cell-semiconductor systems. Fundamental and practical limits of enhancing the biocompatibility of semiconductor surface will be studied. In addition, we will also investigate the long-term reliability of the microelectronic interfaces in the biologically relevant environment, such as thin dielectrics with long-term robustness in the cell culture medium.

Session 4: Energy exchange between the cells/biological machineries and the microelectronic systems ― Sustainable Energy Source.

In many energy-constrained applications, such as implantable devices, it is highly desirable to harvest energy directly or indirectly from the living cells/tissues and/or the surrounding biological environments to power the microelectronic systems. In the inverse case, energy flux that flows from microelectronics to the cells or the surrounding biological environments can impact biological function. For example, cellular respirations may be supported by electronic power. Also, heat generated by the semiconductor back-end could either be harmful or useful to the biological matter.

Session 5. Brainstorming: Synthetic biology for hybrid cell-microelectronics systems

Steering Committee

• Hua Wang / Georgia Tech - Chair
• Joe Qiu / ARO
• Usha Varshney / NSF
• Victor Zhirnov / SRC