- Date:
- 2009-2012
- Themes:
- Healthcare, Bionanotechnology and Biosensors, Nanoelectronics
- Funding:
- EPSRC (Nanotechnology Grand Challenges Healthcare), BBSRC, ESRC
The aim of this project is to develop silicon nanowire arrays, the only technology that has been shown to enable highly specific and ultrasensitive analysis of protein biomarkers with electronic rather than costly optical detection, into a robust user platform for the simultaneous analysis of a large number of biomarkers in the same clinical sample. We will optimize a unique method to fabricate extensive arrays of silicon nanowires with a cost-effective mass-production technology that is similar to that used by the microelectronics industry. The silicon nanowires will be incorporated in an advanced microfluidic matrix that will not only allow the sample volume to be very small (a blood droplet obtained with a simple finger prick could be sufficient), but will also provide the means to divide the nanowire array, which can consist of up to a thousand parallel nanowires, into many individually addressable sets of nanowires. Through appropriate functionalization chemistry, each nanowire set can be made to recognize and quantify a different biomarker, enabling a maximum amount of information to be extracted from a minimal amount of sample.
Primary investigators
- pa
- Hywel Morgan
- Maurits De Planque
- Prof. Susan Halford
- Dr Peter Roach
- Prof. Donna Davies
- Prof. Peter Howarth
Secondary investigators
- mmah
- ml09v
- Dr Francesco Giustiniano
- ks5
- Katy Lyle
- pck1g10
Partner
- Synairgen
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre
- Date:
- 2010-2013
- Themes:
- Bio-inspired computing, Bionanotechnology and Biosensors
- Funding:
- EU
The NEUNEU research programme is concerned with the development of mass-producible chemical information processing components and their interconnection into functional architectures. The individual supramolecular components will crudely resemble biological neurons and will be capable of excitation and self-repair. Self-organisation of organic compounds and proteins will be complemented with dielectrophoretic manipulation to fabricate small devices from interconnected supramolecular components. State-of-the-art micro- and nanoscale technologies will be exploited to take well established physico-chemical phenomena into the new context of forming a ï¬âexible and efï¬?cient substrate for a chemistry-based information technology. Through integrated modeling from component to architecture level a broad understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the implemented as well as related technologies will be established. This ambitious collaboration among computer scientists, biophysicists, chemical physicists, biochemists, chemical biologists and electrical engineers will develop the core science needed to build a future massively parallel computing infrastructure, will deliver prototype devices, and will pave the ground to harnessing bio- and nano-materials for a novel approach to cognitive computing.
Primary investigators
- Klaus-Peter Zauner
- Maurits De Planque
- Hywel Morgan
- Prof. George Attard (Chemistry)
Secondary investigators
- Dr Philip King
- Dr Gareth Jones
- Prof. Peter Dittrich (Jena)
- Prof. Jerzy Górecki (Warsaw)
- Prof. Andy Adamatzky (Bristol)
Partners
- Friedrich Schiller University, Jena
- Institute of Chemical Physics, Warsaw
- University of the West of England, Bristol
Associated research groups
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2010-2013
- Theme:
- Bionanotechnology and Biosensors
- Funding:
- EPSRC
Ion channels are membrane proteins of interest to medical research, drug discovery, and biosensing applications. Expressing ion channels and inserting them into lipid bilayers for characterisation using electrophysiology is conventionally a multi-step process involving the growth and transformation of cell lines followed by cell lysis, protein purification and reconstitution. This is a labour intensive, time consuming and cumbersome process that is often limited by low yields. In vitro transcription/translation is a fast, cell-free and commercially available approach to expressing proteins. A cell-free expression mixture contains all the necessary components for expressing proteins from a supplied DNA template. One drawback of this approach is that commercial cell-free systems are expensive, which has restricted their use to a small number of specific applications. However this is not an issue for lab-on-chip technology, where sample volumes are reduced to the microliter scale.
The aim of this project is to simultaneously express and characterise ion channels on-chip inside microdroplets using in vitro transcription/translation and electrophysiology. This is achieved using a droplet dielectrophoresis device capable of forming lipid bilayers by manipulating two microdroplets into contact inside a well that contains a lipid-oil solution. This transforms the conventional multi-day, multi-step single ion-channel electrophysiology method into a quick and economical process.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- Mark Friddin
- Hywel Morgan
Associated research group
- Nano Research Group
- Date:
- 2009-2013
- Themes:
- Modelling and Simulation, High Voltage Engineering, Environmental modelling, Solid dielectrics
- Funding:
- Industrially Funded
Our modelling of thermal damage in carbon fibre composites after lightning strike aims to simulate coupled electric current flow and thermal fields in composites structures during lightning strike, and associated degradation of the material. (The lightning strike protection is an essential part of any modern development, such as aircraft wings or wind turbines' rotating blades.) Our main objective is to develop a qualitative mathematical model and an effective computational method to predict the composites behaviour during lightning strike through a robust understanding of the physics of the associated high-voltage and high-current processes.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigator
- rc805
Associated research groups
- Electrical Power Engineering
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-2012
- Theme:
- Novel Sensors
- Funding:
- EUFP7
The project concerns flexible materials in the form of high added value smart fabrics/textiles which are able to sense stimuli and react or adapt to them in a predetermined way. The project will exploit screen and inkjet printing together with microfabrication based strategies to achieve functionality. This will result in a low-cost, easy to design, flexible, rapid way to manufacture multi function smart textiles for a large set of multi-sectorial applications.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
Partners
- IFTH - Institut Francais du Textile et de L'Habillement
- DITF - Deutsche Institute fur Textil- und Fasrforschung Denkendorf
- Klopman International Srl
- JSI - Institut Jozef Stefan
- Verstraete-Hahn OVD Bonfort
- Insensor A/S
- Acondicionamient Tarrasense Leitat
- Saati SPA
- Ardeje SARL
- Elasta Ind.NV.
- Paul Boye Technologies
- UoM - Otto Von Guericke Universtaet Magdeburg
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2010-2014
- Theme:
- Novel Sensors
- Funding:
- EUFP7
BRAVEHEALTH proposes a patient-centric vision to CVD management and treatment, providing people already diagnosed as subjects at risk with a sound solution for continuous and remote monitoring and real time prevention of malignant events. The solution proposed will be made up of the following sub-systems: 1)WEARABLE UNIT: it is an innovative concept of miniaturised multiparameter sensor, able to continuously monitoring the most critical parameters needed to perform a thorough diagnosis by means of specific diagnostic and prognostic algorithms running on it. It will be possible both to perform scheduled analysis of critical parameters and to remotely trigger the screening of specific vital signs. 2)REMOTE MANAGEMENT UNIT: it represents the main interface between physicians and the system, providing both automated support, in the form of text messages with information or suggestions to the patient directly generated by the system, and doctor managed supervision, allowing direct communication with the patients with voice/text/chat messages. The most important added value of the this unit is the possibility to be interfaced with existing National Health Records and Physiological Data Banks in order to generating and verifying risk prediction models using advanced data mining approaches. 3)LIFE! GATEWAY: Data acquired by the wearable unit will be relayed to a gateway which represents the means by which the information flow from the user to the Central Supervision Unit. This unit will provide the user with the following functionalities: a)Real time communications: in case of anomalies, or simply to suggest specific drugs to be taken, or to advice some particular activity to be performed; 2)Location aware information, exploiting the positioning capabilities of GPS. 3)Mobile virtual community for education and support.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-2011
- Theme:
- Modeling and Simulation
- Funding:
- (British Council, UKIERI)
This is a collaborative project with MNIT, Jaipur and IISc, Bangalore, India, to investigate the porting of electronic design automation algorithms to multi-processor platforms.
Primary investigator
Partners
- MNIT, Jaipur
- IISc, Bangalore
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Themes:
- Novel Sensors, Pervasive Healthcare and Telemedicine, Healthcare in ECS
- Funding:
- Adventure in Research Grant
Sensory feedback is essential for motor learning and critical to recovery from neurological impairment, such as stroke. In neurological conditions, sensory deficits are often present, limiting the potential for recovery. Current understanding of neuroplasticity would support the argument that sensory, cutaneous input (stimulation that is applied to the skin) may enhance sensory-motor learning. Current rehabilitation robots use interfaces, such as virtual reality, to increase patient motivation during therapy. However, these systems do not give tactile feedback as you would normally experience when you grasp or interact with a real object. There is a need to design a system for effective recovery of reaching and grasping following stroke that is compatible with a range of rehabilitation robots, is low-cost and can translate between hospital or home use.
In humans, haptic sensory information is both tactile (related to contact and pressure) and kinaesthetic (related to position and motion). A range of different technologies, devices, methods and techniques have been proposed for providing a realistic tactile feedback to the fingertip, and a range of these will be investigated in this project. Other applications of the technology are in virtual reality for computer aided design and gaming.
This collaborative project (between the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the School of Health Sciences) is developing novel devices for providing a tactile sensation to a personââ¬â¢s fingertip using a variety of different technologies and mechanisms. The developed devices are evaluated through human studies to ascertain which provide the most realistic and usable sensations for use in stroke rehabilitation. Each device will be evaluated by iterative testing with unimpaired participants and stroke patients to identify which mechanism(s) provide a realistic sensation and satisfies aesthetic, comfort, reliability and calibration considerations. The project is also investigating the development and evaluation of a wearable system for providing tactile feedback to all fingers on a hand, that can potentially be integrated with an existing rehabilitation robot.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigator
- Dr Sara Demain
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2008-
- Themes:
- Wireless Sensing and Sensor Networks, Energy Harvesting, Energy Harvesting & Sensing Devices, Low-Energy Sustainable Systems, Low-Energy Sustainable Systems
- Funding:
- EPSRC
The severe constraints imposed by limited battery life on applications such as remote unattended sensing has led to a ever-growing interest in realizing perpetually-powered, batteryless embedded systems powered by ambient energy sources. Depending upon the application, the design of such systems is challenged by variability in environment as well as small harvested-power availability. Increasing efficiency of harvesters while minimizing losses in energy conversion/storage is only a partial solution; to achieve true perpetual operation these systems need to be adaptive to harvested-energy availability.
The research under this topic focuses upon advancing the state-of-the-art in realization of harvested-energy awareness at a system-level. This involves developing and/or optimizing modules that enable low overhead energy monitoring and prediction while taking into account the limitations inherent in energy harvesting and storage components in a system. These modules are key building blocks for implementing robust energy-harvesting powered systems that feature graceful degradation user requirements with harvested-energy availability.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
- mia08r
Associated research groups
- Pervasive Systems Centre
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2009-
- Themes:
- Low-Energy Sustainable Systems, Systems Design, Model-Based Verification, Formal Methods, Low-Energy Sustainable Systems, Low-Energy Sustainable Systems
The advent of low-cost, low-power multi-core systems provides the opportunity to exploit the parallelism offered by such systems. However, even if high-level programming models are provided to exploit this parallelism, it is important that the underlying memory-model supports parallel programming in an efficient way. It is also important that the memory model is rigorously defined to facilitate the proper verification of parallel applications.
The memory model defines behaviours of transactions between the memory and the processor. For a uniprocessor system, microarchitectures like out-of-order execution, speculative execution, forwarding and cache hierarchy could effectively increase the performance of systems. For a multiprocessor system with shared memory, such techniques may easily break the sequential consistency in a multi-thread programme and result in unexpected execution. Therefore, weak memory models introduce barrier (fence) instructions to keep the sequential consistency while maintain the optimized system performance by using those techniques. And the verification of the system becomes an important issue to ensure the system behaviours as expected. However, the verification of weak memory models is inefficient by using simulation-based approach. So the formal method-based verification approach is investigated.
Formal methods are mathematical based technique to model and verify software and hardware systems by using model checking and theorem proving [1]. Event-b is one of formal methods which are based on set theory for system-level modelling and analysis. In Event-b, a chain of refinements is used to represent the system at different abstraction levels. With the support of Rodin platform, the consistency of two levels of refinement could be verified by using automated mathematical proof [2]. This project aims to develop weak memory models formally within multiprocessor shared-memory systems in Event-b and to evaluate performance of systems with weak memory models.
References: [1] Neil Storey, Safety-Critical Computer Systems, Pearson Education Limited, Bath, UK,1996 [2] Event-B,http://www.event-b.org/
Primary investigators
- fl1e08
- jlc05r
Secondary investigator
Associated research group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering