CEAS Dean Andrew Singer Receives UFFC Trailblazer Award
Andrew Singer, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS), was awarded the Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (UFFC) Multidisciplinary Trailblazer Award for a study he did in collaboration with other researchers.
The awarded research project, “Video-Capable Ultrasonic Wireless Communications Through Biological Tissues,” evaluates the effectiveness of a new data technique for data transmission through tissue.
“The potential for new applications in human health are limitless,” said Singer. “It’s like thinking of technology before and after we had mobile wireless communications. Everything used to require a wire to transmit information from one place to another, and it was science fiction to think of a telephone or camera that could send sound, images, and video without wires. We can now do this through living tissue using this technology.”
The UFFC Multidisciplinary Trailblazer Award is a new publication award that was established in 2023. The award recognizes a paper published within the last three years that best demonstrates “multidisciplinary excellence” in the UFFC society. In addition, the paper needs to meet the following journalistic standards of excellence: novelty, significance, rigor and writing quality.
The research project combined the expertise of researchers from many different disciplines, from electrical engineering, to biomedical engineering and veterinary medicine.
“The work represents a truly multidisciplinary effort,” said Michael Oelze, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and contributor to the research. “We combined expertise in signal processing, communications, and diagnostic ultrasound to open up an entirely new avenue of research with many potential applications to improving healthcare delivery. Our demonstration of high data rates through the body using ultrasound as the communications channel could revolutionize the way that in-body devices operate.”
Prior to the study, radio waves were used to transmit data to medical devices implanted in the body. Radio waves, however, do not propagate well in salt water, which creates problems with living tissue that is largely made up of salt water. The study demonstrates that ultrasound waves transmit data not only more effectively, but also enable doing so at higher rates.
“Our research not only helps open new possibilities for real-time medical monitoring and diagnostics, but also demonstrates the potential for safer, more efficient in-body communications that go beyond the limitations of commonly used radio-frequency electromagnetic communication methods,” said Gizem Tabak, a former student of Singer who worked on this research as part of her thesis.
The research is an outgrowth of Singer’s research in underwater acoustic communication systems, a research focus of his for more than 30 years. Singer is appreciative of the recognition for his work in the project.
“I am honored to have our team of researchers recognized for this work,” said Singer. “This is an area of research that my collaborators and I have worked on for many years as a team.”
— Angelina Livigni