On April 28, 2023, Azad Naeemi and Tushar Krishna were celebrated as the recipients of this year's Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) Outstanding Teacher Awards.

HKN award recipients are determined by a majority vote of the graduating class of the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) undergraduate program. They recognize the central and crucial role of professors in training and motivating future electrical, computer and allied field student engineers.

Professor Naeemi received this year’s W. Marshall Leach/Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Senior Teacher Award. Naeemi’s research crosses the boundaries of materials, devices, circuits, and systems investigating integrated circuits based on conventional and emerging nanoelectronic and spintronic devices and interconnects.

He holds the distinction of being the inaugural recipient of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) James D. Meindl Innovators Award. He has also received accolades such as the NSF CAREER Award, SRC Inventor Recognition Award, and multiple best paper awards at international conferences.

In recognition of his innovative use of educational technology, Professor Naeemi was honored by the Institute with the Class of 1934 Outstanding Innovative Use of Education Technology Award this year. His educational tools have greatly enhanced the learning experience of students studying quantum theory and semiconductor physics/devices worldwide.

Associate Professor Krishna was awarded the Richard M. Bass/Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Junior Teacher Award. His research encompasses computer architecture, interconnection networks, networks-on-chip (NoC), and deep learning accelerators, with a particular emphasis on optimizing data movement in modern computing systems.

Krishna was inducted into the High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) Hall of Fame in 2022, recognizing his significant contributions to the field. He has also been honored with the Class of 1940 Course Survey Teaching Effectiveness Award from Georgia Tech (2018) and the Roger P. Webb Outstanding Junior Faculty Award from the ECE (2021).

Naeemi and Krishna’s enduring impact on the School of ECE undergraduate program and the wider engineering community will forever be recognized with their names etched on the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Awards display in the Van Leer Building.

Georgia Tech researchers have created a wearable device to accurately measure obstructive sleep apnea — when the body repeatedly stops and restarts breathing for a period — as well as the quality of sleep people get when they are at rest.

Under conventional methods, people who are suspected of having some sleep issue or disorder must go to a medical facility, where they are monitored overnight and tethered to a series of wired probes that record brain, eye, and muscle activity.

The wearable sleep monitor patch developed by a team of researchers and clinicians, led by W. Hong Yeo, an associate professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is made of silicone and fits over the forehead, with a second, smaller silicone attachment that molds to the chin.

“A lot of people have this disorder, but they don’t know it because it’s very hard to diagnose right now,” Yeo said. “Current smartphone apps don’t capture the specific data doctors and clinicians study to determine if a patient has apnea, rendering them useless.”

Conventional existing sleep testing is occurring in sleep labs because of device limitations. This at-home wearable device could be the alternative to the more expensive medical procedures at sleep labs.

Yeo and his team, which included researchers from across Georgia Tech, Emory University School of Medicine, the University of Texas at Austin, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, the Korea Institute of Materials Science, and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, reported their findings in Science Advances in May.

Rising Prevalence

While there are two additional types of sleep apnea — central and complex — obstructive sleep apnea is the most common, Yeo said, explaining that in addition to snoring and arrested breathing episodes, it’s generally characterized by waking up suddenly, gasping for air or choking, and high blood pressure.

Lack of quality sleep can exacerbate other health issues in people with existing illnesses such as heart disease or diabetes, Yeo said. But even those who don’t have other health ailments can have serious complications from sleep apnea because the longer it goes undetected and untreated, the more it will affect their hearts and brains over time.

Seeing the toll sleep apnea was taking on the U.S. population, Yeo set out to apply his wearable device research to the industry with a wireless sleep monitoring patch system. 

The patches — which have an accuracy rate of 88.5% for sleep apnea detection — have the thickness of an adhesive bandage. Three embedded electronic sensors send signals wirelessly via Bluetooth to record brain, eye, and muscle activity. That data is relayed to an app on a smart device such as a phone or tablet for further study and evaluation.

The device can be used at home, negating the need to go to a sleep center or medical facility for overnight monitoring.

“A lot of people have this type of sleep disorder; they just don’t know it,” said Yeo, whose research is centered primarily in advancing healthcare through the development of biosensors and bioelectronics. “In the U.S., more than 18 million people have this type of sleep apnea. That’s basically one out of every 15 Americans, and those numbers are increasing over time.”

Underlying health issues are partly behind the increase, he said, but key drivers are the types of food and portion sizes of the modern American diet as well as stress.

There’s also an economic toll on the country. Poor sleep cost the U.S. economy $411 billion in lost productivity in 2015. That figure is projected to exceed $467 billion by 2030.

Predicting Sleep Apnea

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the technology behind the wearable device records the data to give a sleep score that determines if the patient has sleep apnea or if they are getting enough quality sleep.

In the study, when measured against a controlled group of eight sleep apnea patients whose issues were detected under conventional testing means, Yeo’s wireless patch detected sleep apnea with an accuracy rate of 88.5%. For comparison, an existing headband device on the market had an accuracy rate of about 71% and cannot measure muscle activities.

What’s more, the technology Yeo and his team developed, and the machine learning algorithms used, can predict the likelihood that a person who doesn’t show any symptoms of sleep apnea will develop it at some point.

“By looking at the data, we can say that, if you don’t change something right now — whether it’s diet or sleeping behavior or anything like that — you’re likely to develop sleep apnea because your numbers are bad,” he said.

Solving a Problem

The wireless patch solves a multipronged challenge to conventional testing methodology by addressing current patient issues with comfort, time, access, and cost.

The current process — called a PSG or polysomnography test — proves uncomfortable for some patients. That’s because they must sleep in a fixed position for fear of detaching any one of the 15 wired probes from their skin. Having any of those sensors detach from their bodies risks not capturing enough data for proper assessments.

It's also time consuming because the patient must go to a sleep center and spend the night being monitored by medical personnel. There can also be a lag to even get tested. Patients who don’t have severe symptoms or other high-risk, underlying factors such as heart disease or hypertension, often must wait after getting a referral from a doctor to be slotted for a bed at a sleep center, pending availability. Finally, the current detection method is costly to patients and insurance systems, tallying roughly $8,000 per person, per night.

“So that testing barrier is really high for regular people unless you are already sick, then they will screen you to avoid any severe conditions,” Yeo said. “But for people who don’t show symptoms, you won’t know whether you have the sleep disorder until it gets severe. We want to stop sleep apnea before it starts.”

CITATION: Woon-Hong Yeo, Shinjae Kwon, Hyeon Seok Kim, Kangkyu Kwon, Hodam Kim, Yun Soung Kim, Sung Hoon Lee, Young-Tae Kwon, Jae-Woong Jeong, Lynn Marie Trotti, Audrey Duarte. “At-home wireless sleep monitoring patches for the clinical assessment of sleep quality and sleep apnea.” Science Advances. May 24, 2023. doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg9671.

The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) Office of Education and Outreach participated in the 2023 National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) conference, held in Atlanta on March 23-25, 2023. The NSTA is a community of science educators and professionals committed to best practices in teaching science and STEM and its impact on student learning.

During the conference, the IEN team, along with the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office (NNCO) from Washington, D.C., shared the many opportunities available to educators to learn about and teach nanotechnology to their students. IEN also provided an optional tour of its micro- and nanofabrication cleanroom and its Materials Characterization Facility for conference attendees. During the tour attendees got a firsthand view of the work that takes place, the capabilities of the facility, and notable research accomplishments.

“Partnering with organizations like the NSTA gives us an opportunity to teach educators how they can incorporate nanotechnology in their classrooms,” said Mikkel Thomas, IEN’s associate director for education and outreach. “Since the conference was held in Atlanta, we were able to not only share the many programs we have with them but also showcase our facilities.”

As part of its mission to prepare the workforce of the future, IEN offers opportunities for educators to learn about and teach nanotechnology. This includes the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program for high school teachers and technical college faculty a paid opportunity to experience the excitement of nanotechnology research and share this experience in their classrooms. In addition, the Summer Nanoscience Institute for Middle School Teachers (NanoSIMST) is a five-day workshop in which teachers will learn about nanoscience, develop lesson plans, and receive hands-on activities that bring nanoscience into the classroom.

In addition, high school teachers that participated in IEN’S Summer 2022 RET program shared their experiences with attendees by presenting a talk at the conference. The RET program was funded by the National Science Foundation and is part of a larger program within the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).

More than 150 academic, government, and industry experts gathered on Tuesday, May 2, in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building for Georgia Tech Chips Day. The event was designed to bring together experts in microelectronics to learn from each other, network, and discuss this rapidly changing field.

Hosted by the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), Chips Day began with a recorded statement from U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff emphasizing the importance of microelectronics and semiconductor research and commending Georgia Tech for hosting the event.

The agenda included speakers with a wide variety of expertise, including Gregg Bartlett, chief technology officer of GlobalFoundries, Fayrouz Saad, director of public engagement for the CHIPS Program Office, and Victor Zhirnov, chief scientist of Semiconductor Research Corporation, among others. Multiple Georgia Tech faculty members also gave talks, including Chaouki Abdallah, executive vice president of research, and Arijit Raychowdhury, professor and chair of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

During his keynote address, Bartlett discussed market trends in the semiconductor industry and the market focus and roadmap for GlobalFoundries, one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers. He explained that GlobalFoundries’ core focuses are on innovation and differentiated platforms, including silicon photonics, FinFET, and feature-rich CMOS. Bartlett also noted that, due to the dynamic nature of the semiconductor market, success requires collaboration across research consortia and academic institutions, including events like Chips Day and the recent partnership on semiconductor research and workforce development signed with Georgia Tech.

"I am incredibly proud of the work that the IEN faculty, staff, students, and our industrial and governmental partners did to make Chips Day a success,” said Michael Filler, IEN’s associate director of research. “This event brought together some of the brightest minds in the semiconductor industry to share their ideas and collaborate on solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing our field.”

Chips Day also included a ceremony honoring John Hooper (M.S. EE 1955, Ph.D. EE 1961), Georgia Tech Regents’ Professor emeritus and the founding director of the Microelectronics Research Center (MiRC), which is now IEN. It included an overview of Hooper’s career and accomplishments given by David Hertling, professor emeritus in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Hooper’s children, Jeff and Christie, were also in attendance.

Hertling explained how Hooper worked with President Joseph Pettit in the 1980s to establish a strong microelectronics research presence at Georgia Tech. This included designing the MiRC, which was uniquely constructed as a resource center to enable faculty from all disciplines to engage in cutting-edge research. This model allowed Tech to attract top microelectronics talent and become a leader in the space. Thanks to Hooper’s efforts, among others, IEN is now home to one of the largest academic cleanrooms in the country and supports the research of more than 1,000 users per year from Georgia Tech, other academic institutions, industry, and government labs.

In addition to the talks, Chips Day included industry panels on economic and workforce development featuring thought leaders in these respective areas. Georgia Tech students participated in a poster session to give attendees a glimpse into their research and vendors showcased the latest products and solutions driving advancements in semiconductors and microelectronics.

“Georgia Tech is committed to advancing semiconductor research and development,” concluded Filler. “I am confident that the work that was done at Chips Day will help to ensure that the United States remains a leader in semiconductor innovation for years to come."