I originally started my career in electronics in the assembly and production company BB Electronics A/S as an apprentice in the test-department, where I got my first real taste of electronics.

Later I joined Siemens A/S Flow Instruments, now as a technician, in their R&D department where I assisted in developing new electronic prototypes and thoroughly tested them, and later oversaw and managed the assembly of the first complete prototypes including HW, SW and mechanical parts.

Eventually I sought new challenges and thus enrolled in the engineering programs here at Aarhus University, once again focusing on electronics, particularly low-power analogue designs.

Today this focus has shifted towards researching ultra-low-power designs powered not by batteries, but by harvesting energy from the local environment for example like temperature differences, solar-power, radio waves, or even mechanical vibrations.

Project title: Ultra-low power IC design for ultrasonically-powered implants

This project is part of a larger project called STARDUST. The broad goal of STARDUST is to create a biomedical implant that can help to alleviate some of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. This is to be accomplished by the use of optogenetics, where neurons in a specific area deep in the brain is modified to be sensitive to light of a certain wavelength.

The light source will be an LED in the biomedical implant that will be implanted amongst the modified neurons in the brain. The implant will be powered wirelessly by harvesting the energy from ultrasonic waves transmitted from a transducer placed outside the body.

My task will be on designing an energy harvester integrated circuit (IC) for the implant, and managing the power available to the LED for stimulating neurons. The energy harvesting IC will be used to maximize the energy efficiency of the harvested power by the piezoelectric crystal. The piezoelectric crystal acts as an acoustic power-receiver driven by the ultrasound from an external transducer.

In later stages, I will work on designing chips to monitor the activities of the neurons along with a wireless datalink to transmit the data to an external device for further analysis.

Main supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Farshad Moradi