Innovation On (Her) Mind: Professor Yang Inducted An AIMBE Fellow
by A.J. Kleber
Associate Professor Chen Yang has been inducted to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)’s College of Fellows, a prestigious honor awarded to the top 2% of medical and biological engineers “who have made outstanding contributions to engineering and medicine research, practice or education” including “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering.”
Professor Yang has been selected for this honor for her “pioneering contributions in non-genetic neuromodulation, designing material and devices for high precision modulation for fundamental studies and clinical applications.” She has pioneered the development of opto-acoustic neural stimulation techniques, which has earned her team press in Nature Communications and Light: Science & Applications, as well as funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) Brain Initiative. Axorus, a French company, has licensed the IP of the resulting technologies from BU, and Professor Yang has partnered with Axorus and the Institut de la Vision at Paris’s Sorbonne University to develop a retinal prosthesis to treat vision impairment. Her ground-breaking work on microwave-based neural inhibition for the purpose of drug-free pain management earned a 2022 BU Ignition Award, in addition to support from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
With research interests in nanomaterial-based photonics and electronics for neuromodulation and live cell sensing, Professor Yang joined Boston University in 2017, with a dual appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chemistry. Her Ph.D. was awarded by Harvard University in 2006; she was the recipient of a 2009 NSF CAREER Award, and is a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Materials Research Society (MRS), and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). She currently serves as Associate Chair of the ECE Masters Program,
A formal induction ceremony was held today, March 27, during the AIMBE Annual Event in Arlington, VA, where Professor Cheng and 140 colleagues officially joined the College of Fellows Class of 2023. The department of Electrical and Computer Engineering congratulates her on this momentous achievement.