Dr. Maike Luiken

Biography:

Maike Luiken is the IEEE Canada President-Elect 2016-2017 and will serve as the IEEE Canada President 2018-2019. She was the past founding director of the Bluewater Technology Access Centre (BTAC) (2013) following eight years as Dean at Lambton College, first as Dean, School of Technology, Applied Sciences and Apprenticeship, Fire School, Applied Research (2005), then as Dean of Applied Research and Innovation, Business Development and Sustainable Development (2007). Prior to her engagement at Lambton College, she was Vice-President Research Alliances at the National Capital Institute of Telecommunications (NCIT) in Ottawa. Maike obtained her Staatsexamen in Mathematics and Physics from the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig, Germany (1979) and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Waterloo (1982). She spent a year at the University of Manitoba studying for a Master’s in Electrical Engineering. Maike is currently serving/has been serving on numerous Boards of Directors and Committees, including Nano Ontario, Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (CHFCA), IEEE Canada, IEEE Canadian Foundation, Sarnia/Lambton Workforce Development Board; Bluewater Sustainability Initiative, Rotary Club of Sarnia; Southwestern Ontario Bio-Products Innovation Network (SOBIN), Sarnia/Lambton Chamber of Commerce, Unmanned Systems Canada, Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Advanced Manufacturing Sector Advisory Board. She contributes frequently to the IEEE Canadian Review as Associate Editor and Editorial Focus Advisor, Technology. In addition to her academic career and volunteer activities Maike owns a technology consulting practice and has been engaged in the private sector for 15 years. Maike is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada and a Senior Member of IEEE.

Dr. Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh of Department of EECS, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University

Recent advances in micro- and nano- Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technologies have enabled the development of High-Throughput Screening (HTS) techniques for various applications including drug discovery. Owing to the seminal advances in micro-fabrication technologies, HTS is moving towards massively parallel, miniaturized, and label free platforms. A state-of-the-art DNA sequencing platform featuring millions of Ion-Selective Field Effect Transistors (ISFETs) has convincingly demonstrated the advantage of using standard microelectronic technologies such as Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process in HTS applications. Similarly, many researchers have addressed the challenge of developing HTS systems for monitoring cellular activities on a single chip. Due to the significant advantages of CMOS-based biosensors, such as non-invasive long-term recordings, fast response and label free process, they have been widely applied in many biological and medical fields concerning the study of living-cell samples such as neural cell recording and stimulation, monitoring metabolic activity, cell manipulation, and extracellular pH monitoring. Among various CMOS sensing techniques, the speaker has focused on impedance and capacitive sensors as low-complexity, high precision, label free sensing methods for monitoring the cellular activities such as cell viability, proliferation and morphology. These electrochemical sensors operate based on the measurement of cell-CMOS interaction properties. In this direction, his team previously proposed various capacitive sensors for bacteria growth monitoring, chemical solvent monitoring, Cancer cell proliferation tracking and drug tests. The speaker will share with the audience some of his team research achievements, the current challenges and future works.

Biography:

Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh (PhD, P.ENG)  received his BSc., MSc. and PhD in Electrical Engineering from KNT University, Tehran, Iran,  University of Tehran, Iran and Ecole Polyetechnique of Montreal, Canada in 1992, 1997 and 2008. As per recognition of his research achievement on CMOS Sensors for Lab on Chip applications, he received four  Post Doctoral Fellowship Awards from PDF NSERC, IRDF NSERC ReSMiQ, FQRNT that allowed him to  join the department of  ECE and department of Bio-engineering in McGill University, Montreal,  Canada and University of California, Berkeley, US in 2008 and 2010 respectively . In 2013, Dr. Ghafar-Zadeh joined the department of EECS, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University  where currently he is   an assistant professor and director of Biologically Inspired Sensors and Actuators Laboratory. The research focus of Ebrahim combines CMOS Circuit Design, Microfluidics and Classical Knowledge of Biology and Chemistry to develop innovative devices for life science applications. Dr. Ghafar-Zadeh has published more than 110 papers in various prestigious journals and conferences on various multidisciplinary research topics.