A major technological hurdle in neuroprosthetics is the lack of an implantable neural interface system that remains viable for a lifetime. I will discuss the basics of extracellular neural recording, discuss the state of the art in cortical neural recording and introduce Neural Dust, a concept developed with Elad Alon, Jose Carmena and Jan Rabaey, which aims to develop a tetherless method to remotely record action potentials from the mammalian cortex.

Michel M. Maharbiz is an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley under Professor Roger T. Howe (EECS) and Professor Jay D. Keasling (ChemE); his work led to the foundation of Microreactor Technologies, Inc. which was acquired in 2009 by Pall Corporation. From 2003 to 2007, Michel Maharbiz was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the co-founder of Tweedle Technologies, Cortera Neurotech and served as vice-president for product development at Quswami, Inc. from July 2010 to June 2011.

Prof. Maharbiz is a Bakar Fellow and was the recipient of a 2009 NSF Career Award for research into developing microfabricated interfaces for synthetic biology. His group is also known for developing the world’s first remotely radio-controlled cyborg beetles. This was named one of the top ten emerging technologies of 2009 by MIT’s Technology Review (TR10) and was in Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions of 2009. Dr. Maharbiz has been a GE Scholar and an Intel IMAP Fellow. His current research interests include building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring bio-derived fabrication methods. Michel’s long term goal is understanding developmental mechanisms as a way to engineer and fabricate machines.

This free public talk is presented as part of the monthly “Science@Cal Lecture Series” – details at http://scienceatcal.berkeley.edu