Technograph: Volume 129, Summer 2013

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Volume 129: SUMMER 2014

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TECHNOSTAFF Editor-in-chief

Johnathan Hettinger Managing editor

Lauren Rohr Creative director

Austin Baird Technograph editor

Emma Weissmann Designers

Bryan Lorenz Scott Durand

TABLE OF CONTENTS AT-HOME HEALTH MONITORING

Skip the doctor’s visit as this patch records health data. PAGE 4

HERE’S THE DIRT ON FRESH CROP TECHNOLOGY

University professors perfect technology for more efficient soybean crop yields. PAGE 8

A PROMISE FOR A NEW WAY TO MEASURE HIV New biosensor changes the way HIV is monitored. PAGE 12

Copy Editors

Audrey Majors Lindsey Rolf Amelia Mugavero

Emma Weissmann

Writers

Eliseo Elizarraraz Annabeth Carlson Darshan Patel Publisher

Lilyan Levant Web

readtechnograph.com Email

technograph@dailyillini.com Mail

Technograph 512 E. Green St., 3rd floor Champaign, IL 61820 Phone

(217) 337-8350 AN ILLINI MEDIA PUBLICATION COPYRIGHT 2014

Technograph edi tor

When I first learned that I would be taking over as Technograph editor, I was unsure of my ability to take charge of such a research-focused publication. A couple of weeks ago, I had never heard of “smart skin patches” or HIV “viral loads.” And outside of a freshman year discovery class on science reporting and two classes in the ATMS department, I hadn’t focused on science or math since high school. But, after reading the stories in this issue, I’m excited about my new position. I’m in awe of the research in progress at the University, and excited to share it with you. In this issue, Eliseo Elizar-

raraz delves into Engineering professor John Rogers’ research on wearable skin patches that monitor a patient’s health. You’ll read Annabeth Carlson’s interview with Engineering professor Praveen Kumar about a new computer model that will help yield better soybean crops, and Darshan Patel’s piece about a biosensor that can measure the amount of HIV present in an infected person’s body. The advances and innovations that are taking place right down the street are inspiring, and I want it to be our mission to bring these stories to you in an understandable way. I am proud to present the Summer 2014 issue, which will showcase some of the best of the engineering and science research being done at the University of Illinois. Emma can be reached at wessmnn@dailyillini.com.

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5 BY ELISEO ELIZARRARAZ TECHNOGRAPH WRITER

T

he days of stethoscopes, smart watches and fitness trackers could soon be long gone with the innovations of Engineering Professor John Rogers and his staff. Rogers and his research group are the same group that garnered international attention in March with a 3-D printed pacemaker. This time, it is the development of wireless health tracking “smart skin” sensor patches that has captured the spotlight. Intricately folded wires and a soft, skin-like silicon base allows for the fluid movement of the patch on one’s skin. The device works by sending wireless signals to the user’s phone or laptop, and automatically monitors anything from eyeball movement or a heart electrocardiogram to body temperature. The staff said they hope the patch will allow for doctors to monitor a patient’s health from home and detect any illness or health complications early on. “When you go to the doctor, the doctor can only examine your situation during those one or two hours when you’re with them,” said Sheng Xu, postdoctoral research associate to the Rogers group. “The key point of this is that it’s a wearable long-term monitoring (device).” For the group of researchers, this innovation is almost a decade in the making, according to Xu. Rogers and his group have collaborated with several different universities in what they hope to be a very thorough research project. Yonggang Huang, professor and researcher at Northwestern University, is one of the people who have collaborated on this project with Rogers’s staff. “Professor Rogers and I have been working on this device together for eight years,” Huang said. “This device is really an initial concept design, and it will enable more kinds of health monitoring.” Many institutions have already begun testing the devices, such as Carle Foundation Hospital and Provena Covenant Medical Center in Urbana. Other institutions that have tested the device include medical centers at Northwestern University, The PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN ROGERS


6 University of Arizona and The University of California-San Diego. The centers and hospitals have tested the device’s practicality on a fetus and on illnesses such as skin cancer. The group is also trying to compound on the project’s progress by making the rigid chips on the patches malleable and more ergonomic. “Commercially, available off the shelf ‌ chips are hard and rigid, so how do we make them stretchy? How do we make them have minimal impact on the skin? That is done (through) many sophisticated (steps),â€? Xu said. There are also members within the research group looking to “revolutionizeâ€? the chip itself, with many major companies like IBM, Apple and Intel taking notice, according to Xu. Rogers and his staff have also arranged to meet with Google at the end of the month. The company, according to Rogers, has also taken a liking to the concepts behind Roger’s malleable circuit ideas. Google has expressed interest in working with Rogers and his group to further develop a device similar to the health tracking skin patch, but one that instead tracks information, he said.

“The idea is that this kind of epidermal form is a vehicle for storing all kinds of ‌ information,â€? said Rogers. “Passcodes, all kinds of data that you don’t have to remember, so it’s always kind of with you in that sense.â€? According to Xu, industry attention is something that the Rogers research group welcomes. “If we get the industry attention, this process can be easily scaled up,â€? Xu said. “We are all doing this hand by hand now.â€? When it comes to marketing and commercializing the product, Rogers and his group are working with the Massachusetts-based tech company, MC10. The company’s goal is to “make humans more superhuman,â€? and said they have expressed interest in mass producing Rogers’ devices like the health tracker in the years to come. “The guys at MC10 are in a different mode — they take these ideas and make them very manufacturable,â€? said Rogers. What the development of these kinds of smart skin patches means to the future of health sciences remains to be seen, but their promise is not lost on University students.

“It might make it a less doctor-based health care system where the patient can constantly know what’s going on with them, and it seems like a really big field.� — John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering

“It seems like a really big breakthrough,� says Paul Trzupek, freshman in Engineering. “It might make it a less doctor-based health care system where the patient can constantly know what’s going on with them, and it seems like a really big field.� Ayana Jamal, sophomore in LAS, said that she also feels there is place for this kind of technology in the future. Jamal

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7 said that she thinks these devices could also greatly influence the way 21st century interaction between doctors and patients will work. “Communication between patient and doctor would have the ability to be a lot more fluid and interactive, because doctors would be able to consistently monitor their patients and immediately intervene if an issue is noted,” Jamal said. “It would … allow doctors to have concrete observations on their patients by quantitative means, rather than by relying on patients’ subjective symptoms.” Xu, who has been working on this project for the past two-and-a-half years, said he is confident that he and the rest of Roger’s group can continue to make big strides toward making these devices commercially available in the near future. “If you look at what we did the past 10 years …. what we did five years ago compared to what we do now, we … made gigantic improvements. Following that projection … there’s going to be a huge impact,” Xu said. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN ROGERS

Eliseo can be reached at Elizarr@dailyillini.com.

Stretchable “smart skin” patches are being developed by the John Rogers Research Group. These patches are designed to make health monitoring a simple and wireless experience.

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University professors get to the root of crop efficiency with new computer model

THE CREAM OF THE CROP

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BY ANNABETH CARLSON | TECHNOGRAPH WRITER

8

U

niversity professors Praveen Kumar and Stephen Long, along with Darren Drewry, former postdoctoral researcher, began working on a computer model that will lead to a more efficient way to breed crops back in 2007, and published their research this month in the scholarly article, “Simultaneous improvement in productivity, water use and albedo through crop structural modification.� The Technograph sat down with Kumar, professor of civil and environmental engineering, to discuss the new model. technograph: Why was a computer model

like this needed? praveen kumar: First of all, to give you a

background, this is a unique computer simulation (about) the genetic modification of plants. We are looking at structural modification, so basically we wanted to see if there was a way for the plants to be more efficient in being able to produce more yield, and also use less water and reflect more radiation, so their surface is cooler. There are many parameters with which we can play with, and that’s why you need a fairly sophisticated computer simulation to find the optimal solution. technogr aph: What made you want to

start this research? pk: We had a grant from the National Science Foundation, where we were looking at how the water cycle of the Earth and the carbon cycle of the Earth interact, and vegetation is a very important piece of this interaction. Through exploration of those questions we

essentially got interested in this problem. Based on what we are doing, there is possibly a way to address some really significant issues. technograph: I read that you aimed for

three areas of improvement for growing crops: productivity, water usage and combating climate change by reflecting more sunlight off the leaves. Why did you choose these as areas of improvement? pk: Those are three major problems for humanity. With the world population going from 7 billion now to 9 billion in a few decades, we need more food, so we need more productivity. But the land in which we can expand to agriculture is limited, and we don’t want to just expand to more areas and cut down forests. We want to get more out of the existing land, so we need to make these plants more productive. That’s one question. Water is (also) a significant issue because water is limited in most areas. Agriculture uses 80 percent of the global water, so the question was, ‘Can we do this while using less water?’ Then, climate change is the third biggest challenge. Given that a large part of terrestrial land is agriculture, if we can affect a solution to climate change, that would be effective as well. There are a lot of talks about what is called geo-engineering, which is basically targeted on the atmosphere. But this is a fairly safe matter of geo-engineering because farmers grow new crops every year all over the globe, and if there was a way to do that better, then it would immediately and easily affect geo-engineering.

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11 technograph: You used numerical opti-

mization to achieve your three goals. Could you explain this process? pk: Numerical optimization tries to change many variables to see the solution goals, and then finds the most optimal solution. If something is different in water, you can vary water just a little bit to increase or decrease water irrigation. You want to see the possible range of things you can get, and, as a result, there is a lot of exploration that is needed from the numerical point of view. The thing is, you can’t find all these solutions if you are going out in the field. There is no way to say, ‘I am going to change this plant this little bit and see what happens.’ This allows you to explore all possible solutions and come up with (one) that says, ‘This is the best way to do it.’ technograph: Could you give me a brief summary of how the model works? pk: Based on theory and observations, we put in equations, which we solve numerically on the computer. There are well-known methods for solving equations. The only difference is that here we have a very sophisticated set of interactions that are going on because of the root zone, the soil, the water uptake, the nutrient uptake and the photosynthesis process … and temperature. There are a lot of interactions built in. Those are built in using standard techniques of numerical modeling. technograph: What has been the most

challenging part of the project? pk: The numerical model can give out many, many different solutions. Some of them are viable, some of them are nonviable … so going through the different (solutions) and understanding what they mean and selecting the solution that makes sense has been

PHOTO COURTESY OF PRAVEEN KUMAR

Light penetration through the canopy, as shown here for soybean crops, can be improved by structural modifications to the crop, resulting in improvements in both productivity and water use efficiency, as well as lower canopy temperature.

the most interesting and most challenging part of it.

for their work, and the model itself is open to all and available for download.

technograph: What is your favorite fea-

technograph: What is next for the mod-

ture or accomplishment of the model? pk: The best accomplishment is that we can find a solution that addresses food security, water usage and climate change. Often times we talk about trade-off, like if you want to grow more food, it’s going to be at the expense of drawing more water. But here we are showing that there is possibly a way to address all three of the problems.

el? Or what do you plan to research next? pk: There are many things. We have shown the feasibility of doing this with one crop (soybeans). The idea is to implement it for other crops numerically and other plant biologists to evaluate the actual feasibility of it from the numerical solution, like breeding the crops and then testing what the computer is showing and what it would take. Those would be the challenges going forward.

technograph: Have any students had the

opportunity to see the model? pk: My students have been using the model

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ADVANCEMENTS IN DISEASE DETECTION BY DARSHAN PATEL | TECHNOGRAPH WRITER

HIV

testing could potentially be a quicker, more efficient process in the near future, thanks to a team of developers from both the University and Harvard Medical School. Consider this example: Customarily, doctors take samples of patients’ blood or saliva to test for a specific type of antibody that is present in an infected person. These are traditionally sent to a laboratory to be examined before test results are revealed, generally several days or even a week later.

But patients might not have to wait through the laborious, and often anxious, process any longer. A group of nine researchers at the University and Harvard Medical School have developed a new biosensor that can determine how widespread the infection is within the body. And if the technology is further developed, the biosensor would also allow physicians to determine the success of antiretroviral therapy, which can contain the disease and allow patients to live longer lives. This is important because

ea rl ier resu lt s could help physicians determine if medical care is needed immediately, or help patients plan if they need to take any precautions right away, said Brian Cunningham, who is an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University and one of the professors involved in the project. Here’s how the technology works: The sensor is coated with antibodies (which the body naturally produces to fight off

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HIV) that are designed to recognize the protein that is on the outside surface of the virus and measure the mass of the HIV present. Other forms of rapid HIV testing already exist — some point-of-care exams accurately reveal results within a half-hour or an hour. Similarly, this new type of test can be performed in about a half-hour, Cunningham said. But, in this case, the test could be performed from the comfort of one’s home. “The current standard of care requires

that you have a lab with trained personnel,� said Erich Lidstone, a postdoctoral fellow who worked on the project. “But if we could potentially put this sensor into a finger stick machine that could read whole blood from a patient, then you bypass that whole need for a lab, and a structure and a hospital and trained personnel. You’re able to get diagnostics without all that infrastructure.� In the case of this sensor, after a person draws blood, the biosensor in a small plastic cartridge (that would slide into a hand-

held cradle) would be able to analyze the sample and generate results on a smartphone application, which hasn’t been developed but is in the works. The biosensor, which has been in use for more than a decade, was previously used to test for contaminants in waters by Cunningham and his co-workers. But they wanted to see how it worked when detecting pathogens. Cunningham said the group used the biosensor to test for HIV because it’s a widespread problem, particularly in some

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14 third-world countries in Africa (HIV and AIDS has caused about 25 million deaths and more than 30 million people are infected worldwide, according to the study). The nature of the technology, if optimized, would be the most beneficial to areas that really don’t have accessible infrastructure or are working from a limited number of resources, such as rural parts of some African countries, Lidstone said. “We hope that the approach can be commercialized so that viral load monitoring can be more easily performed where the patients are located,” Cunningham said in an email. This work could also lead to a biosensor that might be able to detect several viruses at once. For example, a different antibody could be used to recognize a different pathogen with the current model of the sensor, and one could be designed to have multiple regions, allowing researchers and physicians to plug in multiple antibodies in hopes of getting results for multiple viruses. Darshan can be reached at patel@ dailyillini.com and @drshnpatel.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIAN CUNNINGHAM

University professor Brian Cunningham and his research group are looking into developing a smartphone application that displays the data recorded from the biosensor. The idea behind the technology is that patients would be able to test for the virus from the comfort of their homes.

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