CIRCUITRY THAT
MIRRORS BIOLOGY
Bio-inspired electronics that are already transforming outcomes
for patients, Charlotte Hathway fi nds out more
In the world of technology, a lot of
big words get bandied about so
frequently they stop meaning big
things. ‘Pioneering’, ‘revolutionary’,
‘innovative’… the list goes on. Yet
when I spoke to Imperial College
London’s Dr Pantelis Georgiou a
few weeks back, those were the
only words that felt appropriate to
describe the research he and his
team carry out in the university’s
Faculty of Engineering, Department of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
He is the head of the Bio-inspired
Metabolic Technology Laboratory in
the Centre for Bio-inspired Technology
where a multi-disciplinary group
invents, develops and demonstrates
advanced micro-devices to meet
global challenges in biomedical
science and healthcare.
“A lot of the research we do is
what we call bio-inspired. If you look
at biology and the human body, it’s
something that has evolved over
millions of years. Now it’s at a state
where it does what it does extremely
ef ciently, with low amounts of power.
The human brain, for example, is
Below: The artifi cial
pancreas developed
by the team
seven orders of magnitude more
ef cient than the world’s best
microprocessor and, if you look at
the components it uses, they’re not
entirely precise.
“The neurons in your brain or
the receptors that sense glucose in
your cells are not working with 32-
bit accuracy. They’re slow and noisy
components, yet they manage to
holistically carry out bodily function
with extreme accuracy, precision and
robustness.”
“In our group, we look to biology
and see the way it’s architected
and behaves. Then we try and
create microelectronic systems
which perform the same function
with similar ef ciencies, and we
also draw parallels between the two
mediums. In microelectronics, we
have transistors; the currents that
ow through those transistors are
governed by physical laws which
govern the movement of electrons
20 25 February 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
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