Prof. Christopher J. Bettinger
Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University

Edible Electronics : Bioinspired materials and structures for ingestible batteries

Ingestible electronic devices have the potential to obviate many of the challenges associated with chronic implants such as risk of infection, chronic inflammation, and costly surgical procedures. Examples of ingestible electronics include edible cameras, ingestible event monitors, and integrated smart drug delivery systems. Commodity polymers and off-the-shelf electronic components currently limit the prospective scope of these devices. This talk will describe recent advances in bioinspired materials for potential use in edible electronic devices. Highlights will include melanin-based pigments as materials for on-board energy storage systems. Structure-property-processing relationships for ingestible energy storage materials will be presented and new insights into the supramolecular structure of natural pigments will be identified. Prospective uses for these application-specific materials will also be discussed.

Christopher J. Bettinger is currently an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. He directs the laboratory for Biomaterials-based Microsystems and Electronics at CMU, which is broadly interested in the design of novel materials and interfaces that promote the integration of medical devices with the human body. Recent efforts focus on addressing materials challenges in the design and deployment of edible electronics for diagnostics and therapeutics.

C. Bettinger has received honors including the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research, the ACS AkzoNobel Award for Polymer Chemistry, the MIT Tech Review TR35 Top Young Innovator under 35, and the DARPA Young Investigator Award. Prof. Bettinger is also a co-inventor on several patents and co-founder and CTO of Ancure, LLC, a medical device company based in Pittsburgh, PA. Prof. Bettinger received an S.B. in Chemical Engineering, an M.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering as a Charles Stark Draper Fellow, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the Department of Chemical Engineering as an NIH Ruth Kirschstein Fellow.