Biography

Mohamad Sawan, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society of Sciences of Canada, Fellow of the IEEE, is an internationally renowned scientist in the field of smart medical devices. He has made significant contributions in implantable and wearable medical devices based on smart microsystems. Professor Sawan got a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Sherbrooke in 1990, was a postdoc fellow in Biomedical Engineering in McGill University in 1991, and was assistant professor, associate professor and full professor from 1991 to 2018 in Polytechnique, the Engineering School of University of Montreal. He joined the School of Engineering of Westlake University as a Chair Professor in 2018, he is the Founder and Principle Investigator the Center of Excellence in Biomedical Research on Advances-in-Chips Neurotechnologies (CenBRAIN Neurotech) in Westlake University.

Research

Prof. Sawan was awarded a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Smart Medical Devices from 2001 to 2015. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the internationally influential IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

Smart medical devices include biosensors and actuators, which involve microelectronics, microfluidics, integrated circuits, microfabrication, signal processing, wireless communication, nanophotonics, microsystem integration, assembly, and packaging. This multidisciplinary field of interest is mandatory to build custom microsystems intended to recover or enhance human body functions. Within his CenBrain, Professor Sawan is focusing on diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.  He is building brain-machine interfaces integrating artificial intelligence methods to decode and predict neural activities. The main academic achievements of Professor Sawan include:

a. Proposed a cortical implantable microsystem for vision recovery, which is intended to solve vision dysfunctions related to neural systems.

b. Proposed artificial sphincter and bladder implantable microsystem as novel and effective alternative solutions for patients with incontinence and urination problems.

c. Proposed smart petri dish based on an array of capacitive sensors, for cell-based disease screening and drug-resistance analysis.

d. Proposed microsystems to locate the focus of epileptic seizures, and onset detect these seizures.  He is applying artificial intelligence technique to predict ahead of time the emergence of the seizures, then drug can be administered to avoid seizures. As a result, epileptic patients can have normal lives.

e. Proposed a combined EEG+NIR helmet-based system which can detect any brain abnormalities within 2cm under cerebral cortex. It can be used to detect cortical changes due the oxygenation rate variation of intracortical tissues.

f. Proposed several wireless power transfer mechanisms and energy scavenging systems (electromagnetic, thermal, optical and RF energy) for implantable microsystems. He proposed wireless links to simultaneously transfer energy and exchange data insuring reliable operation of miniaturized implantable medical devices.

Due to the above research accomplishments, Professor Sawan has been awarded many international awards, including Chinese National Government Friendship Award, Hangzhou Outstanding Talent Award, the Elizabeth II Jubilee Diamond Award, Lebanon Presidential Award, Barbara Turnbull Award, ACFAS - Jacques-Rousseau Award, J. A. Bombardier Award, Shanghai Municipal International Collaboration Award, Top Ten Discoveries of the Year by Québec Science Magazine, and Officer of National Order of Quebec. 

Representative Publications

[1] WU D., SHI Y., WANG Z., YANG J., SAWAN M., “CSP-Net: Joint Compression and Classification Network for Epilepsy Seizure Prediction”, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol 31, pp. 841-850, 2023.

[2] RONG G., ZHENG Y., LI, X., GUO M., SU Y., BIAN S., DANG B., CHEN Y., ZHANG Y., SHEN L., JIN H., YAN R., ZHU P., WEN L., SAWAN M., “A High-throughput Fully Automatic biosensing platform for efficient COVID-19 detection”, Elsevier Biosensors and Bioelectronics Journal, Vol. 220, 114861, 2023.

[3] ZHENG W., CHEN Y., SAWAN M., “Longitudinal Data to Enhance Dynamic Stroke Risk Prediction”, MDPI Healthcare Journal, Vol. 10, No. 11, 2022.

[4] RONG G., ZHENG Y., XI, Y., BAO K., XIA F., REN H., BIAN S., LI L., ZHU B., SAWAN M., “A Closed-loop Approach to Fight Coronavirus: Early Detection and Subsequent Treatment”, MDPI Biosensors Journal, Vol. 12, No. 10, 2022.

[5] WU D., YANG J., SAWAN M., “Bridging the Gap Between Patient-Specific and Patient-Independent Seizure Prediction Via Knowledge Distillation”, J. Neural Eng.， Vol. 19, No. 3, 2022.

[6] XU Y., YANG J., SAWAN M., “Multichannel Synthetic Preictal EEG Signals to Enhance the Prediction of Epileptic Seizures”, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Online, 2022, 3171982.

[7] WANG C., YANG J., SAWAN M., “NeuroSEE: A Neuromorphic Energy Efficient Processing Framework for Visual Prostheses”, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, and Featured cover page, Vol. 26, No. 8, 2022, pp. 4132-4141.

[8] ZHANG H., RONG G., BIAN S., SAWAN M., “Lab-on-Chip Microsystems for Ex Vivo Network of Neurons Studies: A Review”, Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol., Vol.16, No. 10, 2022, 841389.

[9] SU Y., LI N., WANG L., RONG G., LIN R., ZHENG Y., SAWAN M., “Stretchable transparent supercapacitors for wearable and implantable medical devices”, Advanced Materials Technologies Journal, John Wiley & Sons, and Featured page, Vol. 07, No. 1, 2022, 2100608.

[10] BIAN S., SHANG M., SAWAN M., “Rapid biosensing SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in vaccinated healthy donors”, Elsevier, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Vol. 204, May 2022, 11405.

[11] ZHAO S., YANG J., SAWAN M., “Energy-Efficient Neural Network for Epileptic Seizure Prediction”, IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 69, No. 1, 2022, pp. 401-411.

[12] WANG Z., YANG J., SAWAN M., “A Power Efficient Refined Seizure Prediction Algorithm Based on an Enhanced Benchmarking”, Nature Scientific Reports, Springer, Vol. 11, 2021, 23498.

[13] SAWAN M., YANG J., TARKHAN M., CHEN J., WANG M., WANG Ch., XIA F., CHEN Y., "Emerging Trends of Biomedical Circuits and Systems", Foundations and Trends in Integrated Circuits and Systems: Vol. 1: No. 4, 2021, pp. 217-411.

[14] YANG, J., SAWAN M., “From Seizure Detection to Smart and Fully Embedded Seizure Prediction Engine: A Review”, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS), Vol. 14, No. 5, 2020, pp. 1932-4545.

[15] Rong, G., Mendez, A., Bou Assi, E., Zhao, B., Sawan, M., “Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Review and Prediction Case Studies”, Elsevier, Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 3, Mar. 2020, pp. 291-301.

Open Positions

CenBRAIN Neurotech Center of Excellence is recruiting postdoctoral researchers and research assistants. For more information, please see:

https://cenbrain.westlake.edu.cn/VACANCIES.htm 

We also welcome Bachelor or Master students in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering to apply for PhD program in School of Engineering of Westlake University.