A team led by Prof. Hilmi Volkan Demir (director of UNAM and member of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics departments) has, in collaboration with researchers at Colorado State University in the US, received a US National Institutes of Health research grant (NIH-R01) for a large-scale project on wireless in vivo sensing for early detection and prediction of complex bone fracture healing. During the project, Prof. Demir and his team will work to develop a biocompatible wireless metamaterial sensing platform. This wireless technology, which utilizes multiple deep-subwavelength sensors, is capable of monitoring in vivo and predicting whether the healing process is progressing toward clinical success or failure.
Most orthopedic surgical treatments cannot be intensively monitored in the acute time frame of over four postoperative weeks. To address the critical need to identify aberrant healing of difficult fractures in the early time period, this five-year study will demonstrate the use of multisensor arrays that are implantable on flexible substrates. Prof. Demir will bring to the project expertise in the development of implantable electronics and subwavelength metamaterials. Under his supervision, the Bilkent-UNAM team will carry out all phases of the design and fabrication of the implantable biocompatible sensor technology platform.