Alex Abramson
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Medical devices inside and on the body could do far more if they could sense continuously, talk to each other and deliver drugs precisely. Today, most sensor-plus-treatment systems are limited to wearables such as insulin pumps.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
bioelectronics
ingestible electronics
electronic pill
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- Develop a molecularly imprinted polymer sensor, a plastic film that captures cortisol, that resists stomach acid and abrasion, using covalent anchoring chemistry for rapid electrochemical regeneration.
- Engineer an ingestible device with an expandable stomach anchor tethered to a wireless sensing capsule in the duodenum, and validate its cortisol readings against blood cortisol in preclinical animal models.
- Optimize an emitter–receiver network that lets wearable sensors and implanted actuators communicate through body tissue, using computational modeling and in vivo rodent experiments.
- Apply the in-body communication network to sciatic nerve stimulation and controlled drug delivery in rodent models.
- Build a computational model predicting how biologic drugs spread in heart and solid tumor tissue at different injection flow rates and pressures.
- Develop an automated microneedle pump that standardizes injections of wound-healing drugs into heart tissue and immunotherapies into tumors.
More about the research
Implants are held back by bulky batteries and antennas. Drugs injected into dense tissue often do not spread to where they are needed. The research builds bioelectronic devices and delivery tools that address these limits: a swallowable stress sensor, an in-body communication network and automated tissue injection.
Why it matters
These tools could let clinicians track stress in people with depression or post-traumatic stress disorder as an objective measurement rather than by trial and error. They could also link wearable sensors to implants for treatments such as nerve stimulation or timed drug release. Standardized injections could deliver wound-healing drugs after heart attacks, and immunotherapies into tumors, more evenly and with fewer side effects.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
CAREER: An artificial nervous system for in-body communication between wearable and implantable devices
NSF · Jun 2025 – May 2030
Collaborative Research: An Ingestible Cortisol Sensor for Real-Time Monitoring of Stress Biomarkers
NSF · Jul 2026 – Jun 2029
Engineering Tissue Level Targeting of Biologic Drugs via Automated Interfacial Microneedle Pumps
NIH · Aug 2023 – Jun 2028
Closest labs
Benjamin Terry
Brigham Young University, UT·Biomedical Engineering
Design and fabricate a tethered capsule optimized for prolonged retention in the gastrointestinal tract, using a biocompatible, degradable tether and tethered odometry to track position.
Amay Bandodkar
North Carolina State University, NC·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Develop non-toxic sensor arrays based on biofuel cells, devices that convert a chemical reaction into an electrical signal, to detect molecular biomarkers of healing in wound exudate.
Sameer R Sonkusale
Tufts University, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Build an osmotic battery that makes power from salt differences, using cation- and anion-selective membranes made of two-dimensional nanomaterials and ion-infused aerogels in a dry gelatin design, targeting hundreds of microwatts at under 10 grams.
The school
Georgia Institute of Technology: 50 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 572 research doctorates a year.
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