Jonathan, a Finalist in Physical Sciences & Engineering, was recognized for “pioneering bioelectronic materials and implantable ‘living pharmacies’ that combine engineered cells with electronics, advancing personalized therapies for cancer, diabetes, and sleep disorders.”

The three Laureates, one per category, will be named on October 6, 2026, during a ceremony held at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Each Laureate will receive $250,000, the largest unrestricted prize for early-career scientists in the country, and the other 15 Finalists will each receive $15,000.

Congratulations, Jonathan!

You can read the full New York Academy of Sciences press release.

Moving on. Two postdocs finished with us in that stretch. Xudong Ji is now a professor in the School of Microelectronics at the University of Science and Technology of China, and Giovanni Maria Matrone traded the bench for the desk as an editor at Nature Sensors.

Four more defended. Emily Schafer and Xinran Xie went on to postdocs at EPFL and Stanford, Dilara Meli to a postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Naedum Domnwachukwu returned to Feinberg to finish his MD. Rachel Daso graduated and is staying with us until December, which we’re very happy about!

Our master’s students scattered too: Chloe Lenker to Philips, Rosie Huerta to Rockwell Automation, and Julie Kang to a PhD at Washington University in St. Louis. Lucia Galindo graduated recently and is on the job market (if you’re looking for an excellent biomedical engineer, reach out to her, you can find her via the alumni page).

Arriving. Yebin Lee, Catherine Beaumont, Priscila Cavassin, and Jianzhe (James) Luo joined as postdocs. Anna Baur, Zaina Mosalam, Albert Lai, and Zander Schwartz started their PhDs, and Royall McMahon Ward joined us in 2026. Ziyi Liu, Julia Ostrander and Liangying Chen came in for master’s work. Michelle Lotz stepped into a new role as our lab manager, and Rhea William, Zach Hoegberg, and Rachel Nolander joined as research technicians.

Downtime at the summer outing.

Everything else. Thirty-seven papers since the start of 2024, on organic mixed conductors, neuromorphic circuits, electrochemical aptamer-based sensors, and biohybrid devices. Members of the group won several fellowships and awards, too. We’ve had retreats, celebrations, game nights and lots of fun in the lab. We’ll keep you abreast of our activities moving forward by updating this page regularly, so come back soon!

Read the paper

In this work, we revealed the tiny deformations and complex structural changes in water-swelled polymers in response to external voltages, uncovering the evolution of disordered polymer systems. Using a novel technique, X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), to monitor deformation with sub-second time resolution, we found that the voltage application pathway significantly affects the polymer’s stability and structural changes.

Unusual long-term asymmetry was observed between de-doping and re-doping. De-doping quickly reaches mesoscale equilibration due to moving structural distortions from coupled electronic/ionic motion (polarons). In contrast, re-doping shows a persistent non-equilibrium process with evolving mesoscale structures, driven by complex interactions among solvent, ions, electrons, and polymer networks, and significantly modified by the rapid generation of multi-charged species (e.g., bipolarons).

Coupling between charged species, mesoscale domain deformation, and external voltage is, as always, more complex than expected. Moreover, internal strain and structural hysteresis depend heavily on the sample’s cycling history.

This was a great team effort led by grad student Ruiheng Wu, with Dilara Meli and Bryan Paulsen. Thanks to Chris Takacs for his leadership and mentorship, and to our Argonne collaborators Joe Strzalka, Suresh Narayanan and Qingteng Zhang.

Understanding ion behavior is important for OMIECs. While past methods were mostly indirect, our team introduced operando X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy to directly monitor ion composition and mobility during OMIEC operation.

EG-mixed PEDOT:PSS was used as the model system in this study. Thick films showed a similar composition to our previous ex situ results (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2023, 15, 25, 30553–30566), with only cations detected and their concentration modulating by 5-10% between dedoped and doped states. Notably, operando composition results may differ from ex situ data, and thin films revealed the presence of anions, highlighting the interfacial effect on film composition.

We also made new discoveries about ion transport: 1) the cation transport in the first cycle can be separated into an initial rapid electrowetting and a slower proton exchange stage; 2) operando XRF results show consistency with previous optical moving front results in 20% EG-PEDOT:PSS, but in 5% EG-PEDOT:PSS, the XRF moving front lags behind the optical moving front; the difference might be due to residual proton transport; 3) exploring different thicknesses in 5% and 20% EG-PEDOT:PSS, we observed faster moving fronts with thinner films; plotting ion mobility against inverse thickness offers insights into bulk mobility (intercept) and interfacial effects (slope).

This was a great team effort led by grad student Ruiheng Wu, with mentorship from Jonathan Rivnay and postdoc Xudong Ji. We also thank our previous members Bryan Paulsen and Josh Tropp, and our Argonne collaborator Qing Ma, for their help.

In this paper, now out in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, we teamed up with Dr. Stephen Sarles and colleagues from the University of Tennessee to form a new class of polymer supported bilayers. These droplet polymer bilayers (DPBs) on PEDOT:PSS increase the reproducibility and dynamic range of the resulting membrane sensors. In fact, DPBs considerably outperform more standard supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) on PEDOT:PSS electronics.

Excitingly, droplet bilayers like DPBs enable integration of membrane sensors into electrode arrays, meaning that future work can test dozens of membranes in parallel. In this work, we show a proof-of-concept array design with a planar reference electrode to more simply characterize membrane sensing events in parallel.

The future vision of this work is to next incorporate complex transmembrane proteins for detection of biologically relevant stimuli, such as ions, neurotransmitters, voltage, light, and more. We also hope that this membrane and device design can be used for understanding mechanisms of various drugs on membrane proteins and as a drug screening platform. We’re proud to share this work and look forward to the next!

Read the paper

In this highly interdisciplinary study co-led by Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon Universities, we developed an electrocatalytic approach called “ecO₂” that enables bioelectronic control of oxygen generation in complex cellular environments. We used a nanostructured sputtered iridium oxide film (SIROF) as the catalyst for oxygen evolution at neutral pH. The ecO₂ platform exhibited lower oxygenation onset, selective oxygen production, and no toxic byproducts. Importantly, it sustained high cell loadings (>60k cells/mm³) in hypoxic conditions both in vitro and in vivo.

This work demonstrates that exogenous oxygen production devices can be integrated into bioelectronic platforms, enabling high cell densities in smaller devices with broad applicability. The ability to precisely control oxygen generation offers a significant advantage over older methods, potentially improving the success rate of cell-based treatments for a variety of diseases. The ecO₂ system holds promise for improving the viability and therapeutic functionality of transplanted cell-based therapies.

Read the paper

The paper presents material design considerations for the next generation of organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors (OMIECs), which are semiconducting materials that enable critical components used in bioelectronics technologies such as sensors, stimulation elements and neuromorphic devices.

Recently reported strategies used to develop high-performance OMIECs are summarized, and we discuss topics such as batch-to-batch variability, stability, OMIEC processing and alternative platforms.

The paper was written by former group postdoc and current Texas Tech faculty member Joshua Tropp and PhD candidate Dilara Meli.

Read the paper

In her work, Dr. Keate examines the mechanisms by which conductive polymers enhance or otherwise influence the repair of biological tissues, from the standpoint of properties such as mechanics, surface charge, conductivity and hydrophobicity, which all independently affect cellular phenomena. She demonstrates several conductive polymer systems that are suited for interrogation of the mechanisms that most significantly impact cell fate, and thus overall tissue health.

Her work demonstrates, in vitro and in vivo, how these conductive polymers may be applied to future tissue-regenerative applications.

Well done, Dr. Keate!

Dr. Wu’s work on the fundamental chemistry, charge transport and structure of OMIECs lays the foundation for development of better conductive polymers that can improve bioelectronic medicine.

Read Ruiheng’s work, including his most recent paper, “Quantitative composition and mesoscale ion distribution in p-type organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors,” under “Publications.”

Congratulations, Dr. Wu!