TUTORIALS

Corrado Di Natale graduated in Physics (Laurea) in 1987 at the University La Sapienza in Rome. Since 1991 he is at the Department of Electronic Engineering of the University of Rome Tor Vergata where from 2010 he is a full professor of electronics. He teaches courses on “Electronic Devices and Sensors” and “Chemical sensors and biosensors”. 

Dr. Michael Shur is Patricia W. and C. Sheldon Roberts Professor of Solid State Electronics and Director of the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center “Connection One” at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of High Speed Electronics and Systems, former Vice-President of the IEEE Sensors Council, Member of Board of Governors and Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Electron Device Society. He is co-founder and Vice-President of Sensor Electronics Technology, Inc. His awards include Tibbetts Award for Technology Commercialization, St. Petersburg Technical University Honorary Doctorate, IEEE Kirchmayer Award, IEEE Donald Fink Award, Pioneer Award, van der Ziel Award, Gold Medal of Russian Education Ministry, and Best Paper and Best Poster Awards. He is Foreign Member of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Shur research is on smart lighting, deep ultraviolet light emitting diodes and lasers, terahertz electronics, and modeling and characterization of novel semiconductor devices.

Terahertz Electronics for Sensing Applications

Terahertz sensing is enabling technology for detection of biological and chemical hazardous agents, cancer detection, detection of mines and explosives, providing security in buildings, airports, and other public space, short-range covert communications (in THz and sub-THz windows), and applications in radioastronomy and space research. I will review the-state-of-the-art of existing THz sources, detectors, and sensing systems and prospects for novel emerging devices enabling terahertz electronics for sensing applications. Two-terminal semiconductor devices are capable of operating at the low bound of the THz range, with the frequencies up to a few terahertz achieved using Schottky diode frequency multipliers. High-speed three terminal electronic devices (FETs and HBTs) are approaching the THz range (with cutoff frequencies and maximum frequencies of operation above 1 THz and close to 0.5 GHz for InGaAs and Si technologies, respectively).  A new approach called plasma wave electronics recently demonstrated terahertz emission and detection in GaAs-based and GaN-based HEMTs and in Si MOS and SOI, including the resonant THz detection. Graphene and 2D materials “beyond graphene” have also emerged as candidates for plasmonic THz detectors, modulators, and emitters. Emerging THz electronic devices have potential to revolutionize THz sensing technology.

Kirill V. Larin is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. He also holds joint appointments at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Baylor College of Medicine and Department of Optics and Biophysics at the Saratov State University (Russia). Larin received his first M.S. in Laser Physics and Mathematics from the Saratov State University (1995), his second M.S. in Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics (2001) and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering (2002) from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Dr. Larin’s research contributions are in Biomedical Optics and Biophotonics and development and application of various optical methods for noninvasive and nondestructive imaging and diagnostics of tissues and cells (more information could be found on his lab webpage http://www0.egr.uh.edu/bol/). He has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications and chapters in six books on Biomedical Optics. Dr. Larin has received numerous awards including Presidential Award from Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Wallace Coulter Young Investigator Translation Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Houston Society for Engineers in Medicine and Biology, Herbert Allen Award from American Society for Mechanical Engineers, and UH Research Excellence Award. Dr. Larin has delivered more than 50 invited and plenary talks, serves as a chair of Dynamics and Fluctuations in Biomedical Photonics and Optical Elastography conferences and a member of number technical committees at professional conferences. He is senior member of SPIE. Dr. Larin is also an Instructor for short courses on Tissue Optics and Biophotonics for the SPIE, IEEE, and OSA. Currently, his research activities are supported by grants from NIH (1R01EY022362, 1R01HL095586, 1R01HL120140, U54HG006348) and DOD/NAVSEA (PRJ71TN).

Tutorial Description

This tutorial will overview recent advances in development and application of optical imaging techniques for structural and functional imaging and sensing of various transport, developmental, and disease progression in tissues and cells. This tutorial will start with basic description of light-tissue interaction including structural and optical models of tissues with single and multiple scattering. Intensity- and spatially modulated, coherent and polarized light interactions with random and quasi-organized tissues will be considered. It will be shown that light reflection, transmission, scattering, and state of polarization can be effectively controlled by changes of tissue structure and the refractive index of tissue components. Special emphasis will be devoted to theory and applications of novel imaging/sensing modality – Optical coherence Tomography (OCT). Many examples of OCT noninvasive sensing will be provided such as monitoring of drug diffusion and optical clearing, sensing and quantifying of microbubbles and nanoparticles in tissues and blood, early diagnostics of arteriosclerosis, imaging of early embryonic cardiovascular system development, and, newest hot topic, assessing biomechanical properties of tissues.

Intended Audience
Engineers, scientists and physicians who are interested in learning optical imaging and spectroscopy, laser methods, OCT instruments design, and application for biomedical science and clinics will find this course useful. University education on the level of MS in engineering, physics, biophysics or medicine is required. Some basic prior knowledge of optics, statistics, histology and cell biology is desirable but not required.

Giuseppe Barillaro is currently Professor at the Information Engineering Department of the University of Pisa, where he has been leading his own research group (www.iet.unipi.it/g.barillaro) and he has been teaching "Biomedical Electronics I" (School of Engineering, Master in Biomedical Engineering). From March to September 2009, he joined the group of Prof. M. J. Sailor at the University of California San Diego as visiting researcher, working on micro/nano-technology for sensing applications. In March 2014 he was appointed to the Chair board of the international conference Porous Semiconductor Science and Technology.

G. B. research interests concern the design, modeling, fabrication, and characterization of new materials and devices, as well as for their integration on the same chip, by using silicon, glass and polymer technology, to get complex microsytems. In last ten years, he has carried out research activity on different research topics concerning the development of micro and nanostructured technologies, devices, and microsystems for different applications ranging from photonics to optofluidics, from microelectronics to medicine.

G. B. is author of more than 100 scientific publications, among which 60 papers on peerreviewed international journals and 5 Patents.

G.B is currently leading 3 research projects as P.I. (1-Ultra-Sensitive Flow-Through Optofluidic MicroResonators for Biosensing Application; 2-A minimally invasive microsystem for glucose monitoring in diabetic patients; 3- Porous Silicon for Industrial Applications, and others) and 2 research projects as Wp leader (4-Autonomous Real Time Embedded Multi- Analyte Integrated Detection Environment: fully integrated lab-on-chip for fast diagnosis of viral infections; 5-Three-dimensional silicon microstructures for label-free detection of circulating tumor cells by optical tomography, and others). He was also P.I. of the project 6-Photonic crystal optofluidic microsystems for biosensing and Wp Leader in the projects 7-Toward the development of a cell-based optical biosensor: investigation of silicon micromachined photonic crystals as micro-opto devices for monitoring cellular activities,among others.

ADVANCED SILICON MICROSTRUCTURING IN ANY LAB FOR (BIO)SENSING APPLICATIONS: THE CASE OF THE ELECTROCHEMICAL MICROMACHINING TECHNOLOGY

Is it feasible to fabricate advanced silicon microstructures and microsystems for (bio)sensing applications in any lab, at low cost, and with high flexibility? In this tutorial it is shown that silicon microstructures and microsystems of high complexity for (although not limited to) (bio)sensing applications can be effectively fabricated in any research lab with sub-micrometer accuracy and high aspect ratio values (about 100), which is well beyond any up-to-date wet or dry microstructuring approach, using a wet etching, low-cost technology, namely silicon electrochemical micromachining (ECM). ECM technology capitalizes on the experimental and theoretical results reported in the literature over the last two decades on back-side electrochemical etching of silicon in HFaqueous electrolytes. A novel dynamic control of the electrochemical etching anisotropy (from 1 to 0) as the etching progresses allows the silicon dissolution to be switched in real-time from the anisotropic to the isotropic regime (and back if necessary) and enables advanced silicon microstructuring to be achieved through the use of high-aspect-ratio functional and sacrificial structures, the former being functional to the microsystem operation and the latter being sacrificed for accurate microsystem fabrication1.In this tutorial, basic and advanced features of silicon microfabrication by ECM technology are thoroughly reviewed and discussed, both from theoretical and experimental points of view. As case studies, fabrication by ECM technology (and characterization) of all-silicon, integrated microstructures and microsystems for different (bio)sensing applications will be detailed and discussed, with particular emphasis (though not limited) to i) photonic crystal optofluidic microsystems for (bio)sensing applications, ii) microneedle-based chips for transdermal applications; iii) electrically-actuable silicon microgrippers for biology/medicine applications; iv) 3D microincubators for selection of cancer cells on the basis of their metastatic potential.

Dr. Lo Monte received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. (both summa cum laude) degrees in Telecommunications Engineering from University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

In 2005, he worked at Rheinmetall, designing phased arrays for anti-aircraft systems. In 2007, as a contractor for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), he conducted research on belowground imaging. In 2008 he worked as the antenna engineer at PCTEL Inc., developing a new family of WiMax antennas generating revenue above $1,000,000 at product launch. Dr. Lo Monte then became a military systems engineer at General Dynamics Information Technology, conducting research on RF Tomography and distributed sensing. He was a visiting scholar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Wright State University, and is currently an adjunct Professor at the University of Dayton. In January 2012 he joined University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI), and became the principal investigator of a multi-million contract to modernize the AFRL tracking radar facility at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He has subsequently developed the first experimental MIMO radar system for use in the AFRL. 

At UDRI, he is leading the design and development of a multi-million dollar laboratory aimed at establishing the first UAV verification and validation center for autonomy. This facility will include a chamber capable of emulating the real world RF environment for the UAV platforms under test. He is also partnering with small companies in developing novel radar systems for disparate applications, including the first ultra-low-cost air-traffic-control radar network for export to developing countries. He is also involved in many research topics such as GPR, resonance exploitation in Radar, RF/IR/EO RCS signature analysis, anechoic chamber development, as well as serving on NATO panels.

His expertise is based upon a combination of theory and experiment producing advanced radar system that meets client needs. He has experience in HF-to-W Band radar systems design and development. This includes the implementation of digital monopulse, tracking radar, high power amplification, surveillance radars, MIMO radar, multistatic radar, GPR, passive HF/VHF/UHF systems, RF/IR integration, and waveform persity concepts. He also has experience in antenna/microwave component design, computational electromagnetics, inverse scattering, digital signal processing, and electrical & mechanical CAD design.  

Academically, Prof. Lo Monte has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and two book chapters. He teaches “Introduction to Radar” and “RF Systems Design” courses at the University of Dayton. He is also developing the first tomographic chamber that uses industrial robotic arms to rapidly distribute sensors in a 3D volume: this chamber is unique worldwide, and will provide the community with controlled multistatic datasets for SAR, ISAR, inverse scattering and near-field measurements.

Dr. Lo Monte has been very active in the IEEE community, serving as associate editor for the IEEE Sensors Journal and technical reviewer for more than 10 different IEEE societies. He volunteered for technical panels and organizing committees and served as judge for paper competitions. He also organized special sessions and was appointed as session chair in many transnational conferences.

Dr. Wicks is a leading research scientist in remote sensing, signal processing and systems engineering, with a current focus on distributed sensing and radio frequency technology. He has pursued a variety of research interests in his career, including: counter explosive sensor technology, cognitive radar and radio, space object sensing, deep earth sensing radar, multi-dimensional adaptive processing for airborne and space based radar, ultra-wideband radio and radar, passive and active multi-static systems, tomographic radar, and concealed weapons/contraband detection and carrier identification.

He pioneered the concept of knowledge-based signal processing and waveform persity, and has led national and international research teams on the design, development and fielding of novel algorithms, architectures and systems for remote sensing from space, air and surface platforms.

Dr. Wicks was the recipient of many professional honors and awards, including the IEEE Nathanson Award (1998), IEEE Fellow, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Fellow, IEEE Warren White Award for Excellence in Radar Engineering (2009) and the IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technologies Applications (2013).

Dr. Wicks has published over 300 papers, reports, book chapters, books and US patents. 

Distributed Sensing and RF Tomography

Many applications require imaging, shape reconstruction and material characterization of objects in clutter, including, for example, aircraft and airport surveillance, below ground imaging, foliage penetration (FOPEN), concealed weapons detection (CWD), crowd control, border control, through the wall surveillance (TWS), antenna and RCS measurements, as well as quality control, industrial automation, medical imaging and 3D/4D printing. 

Recent advances in computing, computational sciences and radio frequency (RF) technology improved the potential for successful applications tomography to these challenging problems. Tomographic systems may be supported by a variety of technologies, but they all share one common feature in that they require viewing of the environment from a variety of angles. This is referred to as geometric persity of illumination and observation. The technology that supports geometric persity is based upon distributed sensors. For applications where sensing occurs using electromagnetic waves, the most common sensor is the radar. Distributed sensing systems employ a single aperture that is moved to form synthetic aperture radar (SAR) or numerous simultaneous fixed aperture systems. 

RF tomography typically employs a distributed system of low-cost, reconfigurable electromagnetic transmit and receive antennas placed arbitrarily around the region of interest. In RF tomography transmitters generally radiate known waveforms (but sources of opportunity may also be exploited) while spatially distributed receivers sample of the scattered fields, and relay this information to a central processor. The distinctive attribute of RF tomography is its high resolution capabilities: sub-wavelength, range-independent, bandwidth-independent, resolution which is a function of the RF carrier frequency.

This tutorial will present the principles of RF tomography, and the relationship between classical electromagnetics, signal processing, and application-specific phenomenology as in medical imaging, SAR, and seismic sensing. This tutorial will include results from the most recent experiments and trends with many different applications. In particular, this tutorial will demonstrate theoretical concepts using experimental results obtained via one of the first dedicated tomographic chamber in the world.  

Heinz Siesler is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, since 1987. His main research interests focus on the application of vibrational spectroscopy to chemical and polymer research, analysis and quality control. He has written more than 230 publications (including four monographs) in this field of research and presented more than 300 lectures worldwide. He received the 1994 EAS Award, the 2000 Tomas Hirschfeld Award and the 2003 Buechi Award in near-infrared spectroscopy and he is a Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy since 2012. Prior to his present academic position he gained extensive industrial experience as section head in molecular spectroscopy and thermal analysis from 1974 to 1987 in the Corporate R&D Department of Bayer AG, Germany. He also worked as lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (1972-1974) and as post-doc at the University of Cologne (1970-1972), Germany, after receiving his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1970. 

Heinz Siesler is consulting for numerous instrument and chemical companies. Tests and feasibility studies with miniaturized handheld vibrational spectrometers are a special research focus over the last five years.