MedE Special Seminar. Dr. Shriya Srinivasan
https://caltech.zoom.us/j/81272388489
Despite immense technological and scientific advancements in prosthetic technologies, patients rarely use advanced prosthetic devices, as communicating to these devices is cumbersome and frustrating. This talk will elucidate new strategies in reconstructive surgical design and neural interfacing that enable amputees to better communicate prostheses as well as receive proprioceptive and cutaneous sensory feedback, by carefully rewiring mechanoreceptors in the peripheral limbs. Through preclinical and clinical validation, these interfaces demonstrate restored afferent feedback in the peripheral and central nervous systems, improved phantom limb sensations, decreased phantom limb pain and enhanced motor control. Beyond the peripheral limbs, this talk will explore the neural interfacing of gastric mechanoreceptors through ingestible electronics. These approaches give way to a new design framework that can optimize and eventually dissolve the interface between man and machine.
Biography: Dr. Shriya Srinivasan is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a BSE in biomedical engineering and a concentration in biomaterials. Shriya received her doctoral degree in medical engineering and medical physics through the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program in January 2020. Her research focuses on the development of novel neural interfaces utilizing tissue engineering to better interface human limbs with prostheses, in the context of amputation and paralysis. She developed neural interfaces to restore a sense of proprioception and touch from prostheses, some of which have been clinically translated to over 30 patients. Shriya has been awarded the Delsys Prize and the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for her innovative work, and has been named to the Forbes 30 under 30 and the MIT Technology Review 35 lists. Shriya was a former director of MIT Hacking Medicine and works passionately on global health projects. Shriya is currently designing ingestible electronics for gastrointestinal neuromodulation in the MIT Langer Lab in collaboration with Dr. Giovanni Traverso. She directs the Project Prana Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to affordable medical technology innovation.