Welcome
We work to bring novel electronic sensor platforms to a diverse set applications in chemistry, biology, and medicine. At the core, we are interested in the incorporation of novel materials and devices with mixed-signal CMOS integrated circuits to fundamentally improve sensitivity, throughput, and portability of electronic sensing platforms - with a special emphasis on ubiquitous sensing, point-of-care technologies, and accessible instrumentation. We encourage you to read on to learn more about our ongoing efforts; thanks for stopping by!
Ongoing Research Areas
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| Sensors on Integrated Circuits |
Zero Infrastructure Instrumentation | Chemical and Biological Applications |
News
- May 2025 Congrats to Dr. Yu! Richard has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Analog and mixed-signal circuits for biomedical sensor applications." Good luck at Marvell!
- May 2025 Congratulations to Siyuan Yu! His paper demonstrating a high-input-impedance continuous-time incremental ADC for sensor readout has been accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE MWSCAS 2025 conference in Lansing, MI.
- January 2025 Congratulations to Jacob Dawes, Alyssa Estenson, and others! Their paper demonstrating thermal ink jet for Lab-on-CMOS pumping has been accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE ISCAS 2025 conference in London.
- December 2024 Joseph Karam has successfully defended his M.S., "Shape sensing stretchable sensors toward camera-less motion capture." Congrats, Joseph, and good luck at Lockheed!
- December 2024 Alyssa Estenson has successfully defended her M.S., "Upscaling thermal inkjet technology for on-chip microfluidic pumping." Congrats, Alyssa, and good luck at Amorphyx!
- August 2024 Congratulations to Joseph Karam and Aiden Shaevitz! Their paper has been accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE SENSORS 2024 conference.
- August 2024 Louis Marun has successfully defended his undergraduate Honors thesis, and he will continue as a graduate student in the SIM Lab. Congrats, Louis!
- August 2024 Congratulations to Tzu-Hsuan (Debbie) Chou and Siyuan (Richard) Yu! Their paper has been accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS 2024), along with co-authors Calder Wilson, Jacob Dawes, and Jaehyeong Park.
- March 2024 Congrats to Dr. Dawes! Jacob has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Lab-on-CMOS packaging using wafer-level molding and direct-write 3D-printed interconnects." Good luck at HP!
- March 2024 Prof. Johnston has been selected as an IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer for the 2024-2025 term. Learn more here, including details for organizing a visit, or reach out directly by email.
- January 2024 Congratulations to Calder Wilson! His paper describing the use of time domain reflectometry (TDR) with stretchable strain sensors has been accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2024).
- November 2023 Calder Wilson has successfully defended his M.S., "Circuits and systems for feature extraction in pulse processing applications," and will continue as a Ph.D. candidate. Congrats, Calder!
- September 2023 Joseph Karam has joined the lab as a graduate student. Welcome!
- August 2023 Congratulations to Jacob Dawes and Alyssa Estenson! Their paper was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Conference on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems (EPEPS 2023) in Milpitas, CA.
- August 2023 Congratulations to Jacob Dawes and Debbie Chou! Their paper was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS 2023) in Toronto.
- March 2023 Congrats to Dr. Votzke! Callen has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Stretchable Electronics for Wearable Devices and Soft Robotics." Good luck at Burro!
- March 2023 Congratulations to Austin Green for successfully defending his undergraduate Honors thesis!
- February 2023 Congratulations to Calder Wilson, Joseph Karam, and Callen Votzke! Their paper describing the integration of stretchable electronics into a soft robot was accepted for presentation at the 2023 6th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2023). This work is in collaboration with the Laboratory for Robotics and Applied Mechanics (LRAM) and with Prof. Camille Palmer at Oregon State University.
- January 2023 Congratulations to Jaehyeong Park, and to Jinyong Kim and Siyuan Yu! They had three papers accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2023); one of these is in collaboration with the Minot Lab at Oregon State, with Carly Fengel as first author.
- November 2022 Congratulations to Joseph Karam for successfully defending his undergraduate Honors thesis!
- October 2022 Congratulations to Hayden Bialek, whose paper in collaboration with the HSIC Lab at Oregon State University was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2023).
- October 2022 Siyuan (Richard) Yu won a Best Paper Award at BioCAS 2022. Congrats, Richard!
- September 2022 New graduate students Alyssa Estenson and Daniil Lytikov have joined the lab. Welcome!
- August 2022 Siyuan (Richard) Yu was awarded 1st Place in the Best Student Paper contest at MWSCAS 2022. Congrats, Richard!
- August 2022 Congratulations to Tzu-Hsuan (Debbie) Chou and Siyuan (Richard) Yu! They each had a paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS 2022), along with co-authors Jacob Cook, Jaehyeong Park, and Soumya Bose.
- June 2022 Jacob Cook has successfully defended his M.S. thesis, "SIMstat: Wireless, highly-reconfigurable electrochemical analog-front-end for point-of-care diagnostics and continuous monitoring." Congrats, Jake!
- June 2022 Congratulations to Alyssa Estenson, Jordyn Marshall, and Samuel Wagner for successfully defending their undergraduate Honors College theses!
- May 2022 Congratulations to Siyuan Yu! His paper describing a new dual-mode asynchronous delta modulator IC architecture was accepted for presentation at the 65th IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS 2022) and nominated for the Best Student Paper contest.
- April 2022 Congratulations to Abigail Hasler! Her paper describing methods for fabricating wearable, stretchable glove sensors was accepted for presentation at the 20th Annual Opportunity Research Scholars Symposium (ORSS 2022).
- March 2022 Congratulations to Jacob Dawes! His paper describing 3D-printing methods for IC interconnects was accepted for presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Flexible and Printable Sensors and Systems (FLEPS 2022).
- February 2022 Learn more about some of our current group members and recent alumni: Debbie, Callen, and Soumya.
- February 2022 Congratulations to Callen Votzke! His paper describing a self-sensing stretchable circuit was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE 5th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2022).
- January 2022 Calder Wilson has joined the group as a graduate student. Welcome!
- December 2021 Congrats to Dr. Clocker! Kyle has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Automous sensor system for wind turbine blade collision detection." Good luck at Synex Medical!
- December 2021 Congrats to Dr. Sengupta! Shaan has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "CMOS transducers and programmable interface circuits for resource-efficient sensing applications." Good luck at Texas Instruments!
- December 2021 Tzu-Hsuan (Debbie) Chou has successfully defended her M.S., "Linear and single-photon avalanche diode dual-Mode CMOS optical sensor with high frame rate operation," and will continue as a Ph.D. candidate. Congrats, Debbie!
- December 2021 Naixuan Ma has successfully defended his M.S., "Gamma ray detection module for radioactive isotope identification." Congrats, Naixuan, and good luck at Infineon!
- December 2021 Congratulations to Calder Wilson for successfully defending his undergraduate Honors thesis!
- September 2021 New students Jaehyeong Park and Madison Shippy have joined the lab. Welcome!
- August 2021 Congrats to Dr. Kim! Jinyong has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "New techniques for multi-channel biosignal acquisition and low-powered, low-resistance measurement systems." Good luck at Intel!
- August 2021 Tzu-Hsuan (Debbie) Chou and Shaan Sengupta were awarded 3rd place and Honorable Mention, respectively, in the Best Student Paper contest at MWSCAS 2021. Congrats!
- August 2021 Congratulations to Boyu Shen and Jacob Dawes! Their paper describing an IC-based architecture for electrical flow cytometry was accepted for presentation at the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS 2021).
- July 2021 Congratulations to Richard Smith! His paper exploring power available through thermoelectric body heat energy harvesting was accepted for presentation at the 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2021).
- June 2021 Cassandra Davis has successfully defended her M.S., "Advanced Collision Detection for Avian and Bat Species on Wind Turbine Blades." Congrats, Cassie, and good luck at SpaceX!
- June 2021 Congratulations to Derek Webb for successfully defending his undergraduate Honors thesis!
- May 2021 Congratulations to Shaan Sengupta! His paper describing an IC-based multichannel analyzer system for radiation spectroscopy was accepted for presentation at MWSCAS 2021 and nominated for the Best Student Paper contest!
- May 2021 Congratulations to Tzu-Hsuan (Debbie) Chou, Hyunkyu Ouh, and Jinyong Kim! Their paper describing a combined linear and single-photon optical detector pixel in CMOS was accepted for presentation at the 64th IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS 2021) and nominated for the Best Student Paper contest!
- May 2021 Congratulations to Callen Votzke for having two papers describing alternative methods for printable and stretchable electronics accepted for presentation at FLEPS 2021!
- March 2021 Congratulations to Richard Inocencio Smith for successfully defending his undergraduate Honors thesis!
- February 2021 Prof. Johnston was elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
- January 2021 Congratulations to Jinyong Kim and Siyuan Yu! Their paper describing FDM applied to graphene-FET electrodes for neural interfaces was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2021); this work is in collaboration with the Minot Lab at Oregon State.
- January 2021 Congratulations to Jinyong Kim, Callen Votzke, and Soumya Bose! Their paper describing a low-resistance sensor measurement architecture was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC 2021).
- January 2021 Congratulations to Boyu Shen! His paper describing a digitally reconfigurable RC oscillator architecture was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC 2021).
- December 2020 Congrats to Dr. Shen! Boyu has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Impedance Sensing Techniques for Integrated Circuits Sensor Applications." Good luck at TI Kilby Labs!
- October 2020 Congratulations to Hayden Bialek, whose paper in collaboration with the HSIC Lab at Oregon State University and the CoSMIC Lab at Columbia University was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2021).
- September 2020 Prof. Johnston was awarded the 2020 SRC Young Faculty Award.
- September 2020 New students Siyuan (Richard) Yu and Jacob Cook have joined the lab. Welcome!
- August 2020 Boyu Shen's paper and presentation were awarded 3rd place in the Best Student Paper contest at MWSCAS 2020. Congrats, Boyu!
- August 2020 Congratulations to Kyle Clocker, whose paper describing an automated on-blade collision detection system for wind turbines was accepted for presentation at IEEE SENSORS 2020!
- August 2020 Congratulations to Jacob Dawes and Jinwon Kim, whose paper on modeling approaches for impedance-based cytometry was accepted for presentation at IEEE SENSORS 2020!
- July 2020 Congratulations to Boyu Shen! His paper on impedance spectroscopy and amperometric measurement circuits for electrochemical sensors was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS 2020).
- July 2020 Congratulations to Jinyong Kim and Hyunkyu Ouh! Their paper on low noise amplifier design for bioelectrical signals was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS 2020).
- May 2020 Jacob Dawes has successfully defended his M.S. thesis, "Design and Modeling Techniques for Impedance-Based Flow Cytometry." Congrats, Jacob!
- January 2020 Congratulations to Jinyong Kim and Hyunkyu Ouh! Their paper on FDM-based bioelectrical signal multiplexing was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC 2020).
- October 2019 The SIM Lab receives funding from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) to develop heterogeneous integration approaches for sensor-system-in-package (SSiP) applications.
- October 2019 Congratulations to Soumya Bose and Boyu Shen! Their paper on batteryless sensors was accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2020).
- September 2019 New students Tzu-Hsuan (Debbie) Chou, Cassandra Davis, Jeffrey Knierim, and Naixuan Ma have joined the lab. Welcome!
- September 2019 Congrats to Dr. Ouh! Hyunkyu has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "New Architectures and Circuits for Pushing the Dynamic Range and Multiplexing Boundaries of CMOS-Integrated Sensors." Good luck at Apple!
- September 2019 We are happy to be part of a team developing new online educational tools and materials for STEM workforce development with an award from the NSF PEER Program.
- September 2019 Congrats to Dr. Bose! Soumya has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Energy Harvesting and Power Management Integrated Circuits for Self-Sustaining Wearables." Good luck at Intel!
- June 2019 Jason Matthews has successfully defended his M.S., "Low-Power CMOS Sensors for Wireless Sensing Applications." Congrats, Jason!
- May 2019 The SIM Lab receives funding through the NIH BRAIN Initiative to develop flexible active electrode arrays for neural recording interfaces, in collaboration with the Minot Lab at Oregon State.
- May 2019 Congratulations to Kyle Clocker and Callen Votzke, whose papers on compact modeling and cyclic testing of printed liquid metal interconnects, respectively, were accepted for presentation at the inaugural FLEPS 2019!
- March 2019 The SIM Lab receives funding from the Department of Energy for continued development of sensor modules for wind turbines, in collaboration with the Applied Mechanics and Composites Technology Lab at Oregon State.
- February 2019 Our recent work in 3D-printed interconnects for stretchable electronics was featured as a Research Highlight in Nature Electronics.
- January 2019 Congratulations to Soumya Bose, whose paper on efficient, low-voltage thermoelectric energy harvesting was accepted for presentation at CICC 2019!
- January 2019 Hyunkyu Ouh has been awarded the ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award from Analog Devices. Congrats, Hyunkyu!
- September 2018 The SIM Lab receives funding from the NIH to develop smart sensors for wound monitoring as part of the joint NSF/NIH Smart and Connected Health (SCH) program, in collaboration with the Fu Lab, Ramsey Lab, and HSIC Lab at OSU.
- August 2018 Callen Votzke has been awarded a Texas Instruments/SRC Fellowship as part of the SRC Graduate Fellowship Program. Congrats, Callen!
- August 2018 Congratulations to Callen Votzke! His paper on printed, stretchable biomechanical strain sensors was accepted for presentation at BioCAS 2018.
- June 2018 The SIM Lab receives funding from the NSF to develop enhanced-fluorescence optical biosensors, in collaboration with the Cheng Research Group at OSU.
- June 2018 Congratulations to Kevin Bishop, Megan Co, and Hayden Bialek for successfully defending their undergraduate Honors theses!
- May 2018 Boyu Shen and Callen Votzke will present at TECHCON 2018. Congrats!
- May 2018 Kyle Clocker has successfully defended his M.S. thesis, "CMOS-Integrated Single-Element Thermal Flow Sensors." Congrats, Kyle!
- April 2018 Congratulations to Jacob Dawes, Makenzie Brian, and Hayden Bialek! Their paper on EMG-based gesture recognition has been accepted for presentation at IEEE EMBC 2018.
- March 2018 As a winner at the Gradute Research Showcase, Shaan Sengupta earns a spot to present his work in Portland at the annual Oregon Stater Awards. Congrats, Shaan!
- January 2018 Congratulations to Boyu Shen and Soumya Bose, whose papers on low-loss charge pumps and low-voltage ring oscillators, respectively, were accepted for presentation at ISCAS 2018!
- January 2018 Congratulations to Soumya Bose and Hyunkyu Ouh, whose papers on low-voltage cold-start for energy harvesters and SPAD-based dynamic range extension for CMOS imagers, respectively, were accepted for presentation at CICC 2018!
- January 2018 Jinyong Kim and Jacob Dawes have joined the lab. Welcome!
- September 2017 Callen Votzke has joined the lab, co-advised with the mLab. Welcome!
- September 2017 McKay Lindsay has successfully defended his M.S. thesis, "Co-planar Integration of Silicon Integrated Circuits and Microfluidic Networks for Biosensor Applications." Congrats, McKay!
- August 2017 Congratulations to Hyunkyu Ouh, Shaan Sengupta, and Soumya Bose! Their paper on CMOS-integrated wide dynamic range optical sensors for biomedical applications was accepted for presentation at IEEE BioCAS 2017.
- August 2017 Congratulations to McKay Lindsay, Shaan Sengupta, Kevin Bishop, and Megan Co! Their paper on scalable hybrid integration of CMOS integrated circuits with microfluidics was accepted for presentation at IEEE BioCAS 2017.
- August 2017 Congratulations to Shaan Sengupta and Hyunkyu Ouh! Their paper on all-digital CMOS ambient light sensors was accepted for presentation at IEEE SENSORS 2017.
- August 2017 Congratulations to Kyle Clocker, Shaan Sengupta, and McKay Lindsay! Their paper on single-element thermal flow sensors was accepted for presentation at IEEE SENSORS 2017.
- August 2017 The SIM Lab receives funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop electronic biosensors for oral salivary measurement, in collaboration with the Cheng Research Group at OSU.
- July 2017 Congratulations to Kevin Bishop and Megan Co! Their abstract on low-cost, laser-cut microfludics was accepted for presentation at the 2017 BMES Annual Meeting.
- June 2017 The SIM Lab receives funding from the Semiconductor Research Corporation to develop methods for integrating silicon circuits with stretchable, 3D-printed objects, in collaboration with the mLab in OSU Robotics.
- May 2017 The SIM Lab receives funding from the Department of Energy to develop sensor modules for wind turbines, in collaboration with others at OSU.
- February 2017 Congratulations to Boyu Shen and Soumya Bose! Their paper on high-voltage generation in low-voltage CMOS has been accepted for presentation at IEEE ISCAS 2017.
- February 2017 Our project on CMOS-integrated photodetectors and on-chip high-voltage generation won Best Poster Award at the CDADIC Winter Meeting. Congrats to Soumya, Shaan, Hyunkyu, and Boyu!
- October 2016 The SIM Lab receives an HP+OSU Seed Grant to investigate scalable integration of microfluidics with silicon integrated circuits.
- September 2016 Kyle Clocker and McKay Lindsay join the SIM Lab as M.S. students. Welcome!
- September 2016 Prof. Johnston received the 2016 Outstanding Teaching Award from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at OSU.
- June 2016 The SIM Lab receives funding through an EECS Collaboration Initiative to investigate the incorporation of circuits and sensors in soft, stretchable objects with the mLab in OSU Robotics.
- January 2016 Boyu Shen joins the SIM Lab as a doctoral student. Welcome!
- December 2015 The SIM Lab receives funding from Intel to support our collaboration with the HSIC Lab building low-power IoT radios.
- September 2015 New students Soumya Bose, Hyunkyu Ouh, and Shaan Sengupta have joined the lab. Welcome to Oregon State!
- July 2015 The SIM lab receives funding from CDADIC to support our work in CMOS-based radiation detectors.
