Designing a Better World for the People Sat Beside You – Professor Chen Yang’s Lab Works to Enhance Retinal and Brain Implants
by Danny Giancioppo, Photos by Chris McIntosh
Nanomaterials & Interdisciplinary Research
For recently promoted Professor Chen Yang (ECE, Chem, MSE), making a societal impact through her work––utilizing nanotechnology to research, understand, and develop retinal and neurostimulative devices––is everything. The interdisciplinary nature of her research, meanwhile, is a natural part of the process.
“It’s interdisciplinary because the goal, interest, and mission that we’re pursuing is really focused on developing novel materials and making innovative devices as a neural interface, in particular for neurostimulation,” Professor Yang says. “We like to not only record the neuroactivity––for example, you record brain waves to understand how the brain responds to different stimuli: light, language, behavior––but develop technology using those devices to control brain activity. To stimulate it or to inhibit it.”
This multitude of goals allows Professor Yang and her team of graduate researchers to bring significant developments to the field of neurostimulation. Taking advantage of carbon- and polymer-based nanomaterials brings forth not only an enhanced understanding of stimulation in brains and eyes with damaged or suboptimal function, for example, but new and non-invasive means of studying, perhaps even improving said functionality.
The use of nanomaterials in optical and photonic devices helps to develop brain and retinal implants, taking advantage of the materials to contain strong absorption within optimal wavelengths, thereby producing clearer readouts of data, and offering solutions by way of improved visual and neural stimulation. And it’s not only research like this that’s so interdisciplinary in the Yang group.
“Our group members are actually very interdisciplinary,” Yang says. “I have students from Chemistry, from Mechanical Engineering s, from ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering), from MSE (Materials Science & Engineering). And we also collaborate with groups and students with BME (Biomedical Engineering).”
Graduate students in Professor Yang’s laboratory share a collaborative and varying list of responsibilities, from developing injectable solutions––that is, non-surgical implants––which can still be used as means to help restore vision, to developing electronic and photonics-based devices for capturing neurostimulation data, to performing applications for non-drug pain reduction strategies via neural inhibitors. To be a successful student in Professor Yang’s lab, she explains, a researcher must value teamwork, shared responsibility, and a willingness to share in both triumphs and defeats.
Professor Yang explains what successful students are to her: “Number one: they’re not afraid of learning new things, taking new projects that they never touched on. In fact, all my students, when they joined my group––nobody knew how to culture neurons. They all learned from that first step […] When you are in research, every project you’re solving is a new project. So you must be fearlessly interested in doing that.”
“My students are brave. They are fearless. They believe ‘as long as I learn, I’ll be able to solve this problem.’”
Photoacoustics & Societal Impact
For anyone who hasn’t heard of photoacoustics, it’s as cool as it sounds, but perhaps simpler than you’d think. Described by Professor Yang as a “physics” or “energy-conversion process,” photoacoustics is similar to wearing a black article of clothing in the summer; that black clothing soaks in a high amount of light and converts the energy into heat. In photoacoustics, the captured light is instead transferred into sound waves (ultrasound) to elicit a neuronal response. In other words, turning light into sound to study and improve brain and retinal function.
Professor Yang explains, “What’s happening is, we deliver light to the device, the device will convert the light energy into mechanical waves, and those produced mechanical waves will actually activate the neurons in the brain or in the retina.”
Where this research method has a wide breadth of application, including treating disease models where drugs aren’t helping. To elaborate, by using mechanical waves, neurons can be activated, meaning they will respond to the mechanical waves, to trigger neuronal activity in the brain. In some cases, this can be used to control the neuronal activity of a subject, thereby mitigating deviation or improper function, such as with epilepsy. It has even been shown to improve vision for the seeing-impaired.
“In retina application where photoreceptor cells are damaged, those generated mechanical waves can actually activate the healthy part of the retina and generate vision perception in the patient’s brain,” Professor Yang says.
If it seems like this particular research has the potential to change lives, that’s because it has been precisely what Professor Yang has kept in mind since working at Boston University. While she hadn’t begun as a researcher focusing on societal impact, “it’s [been] a journey,” for her.
“When I was a graduate student, or junior faculty, I worked on different types of projects,” Yang says. “Some of them were more focused on science. Trying to discover new findings, to understand what exists and how it works. But I think BU is a great place that’s allowed me to think that, when we work as engineers, it is possible to develop technology that can eventually become a product.”
These products are eventually disseminated among other research labs worldwide––with such collaborators in California, Paris, and beyond. The ultimate goal being to not only enhance the understanding of brain and retina stimulation, but put it into practice as a commercialized product. Namely, practices like their high-precision, non-genetic stimulation project.
On a pixel level, using high-precision stimulation within the retina can aid blindness with non-invasive technology, offering a potential two- to three-times larger retinal implant than what’s currently offered. By using a thin film to generate mechanical waves which stimulate the retina––with materials developed by her students––the healthy sections of otherwise damaged retina are effectively perceiving restored vision. Her team of graduate researchers has even been looking at injectable solutions as an alternative to surgical implants. With all these advancements, Yang is hopeful that in five to ten years, the technology may be ready for human trials. And not a moment too soon, at that.
“The reason why I’m inspired to do this is because I know that it’s needed,” Yang says.
She and her graduate researchers closely collaborate with Professor Serge Picaud at the Institut de la Vision in Paris. When Yang was visiting with a graduate researcher, she says it was outside the lab that they shared a moment which emphasized the importance of their work.
“[Picaud’s group] is in a building next to a hospital that specializes in treating blind patients. I saw more blind patients [there] than in the rest of my life.” In a nearby café when the team went for a lunch, Yang explains, she and her colleagues saw a large group of vision-impaired patients sitting alongside them, eating lunch. “You know those French restaurants––they have very tiny tables, very narrow. [The patients] couldn’t use their sticks, they had to put their hands on the [patient] in front of them. They formed one single line to come into the restaurant and sit down.”
“That was a really inspiring moment for me. What we’re discussing at this table eventually can benefit the people sitting next to us in the same restaurant. That’s how close we can be socially impactful, and I think that’s really, really exciting.”
Promotion to Full Professor & Prospective Students
Throughout her time at BU, Professor Yang has strived to make an impact not only in her university work, but society at large. When she was promoted to a full professor in March of 2024, she considered it recognition for the hard work she and her team started and enabled at BU, and a direct result of the resources and assistance enabled by her colleagues.
Yang describes the support from the Photonics Center community as “immediate” and “the most collaborative environment” she had seen while she and her research group transitioned onto campus in 2017. This included other BU faculty and colleagues teaching her and her students how to perform neuron culture studies, which they had little knowledge of beforehand––and now they’re able to perform live animal experiments.
“Everyone is sincerely interested in the problem that we’re solving and how we solve it,” Yang explains. “They are willing to spend time looking at our work, our results, to help us. I don’t have a neuroscience background at all––so we have to learn!”
Looking ahead, Yang wants any and all prospective students to be just as “fearlessly interested” in solving new tasks and learning new solutions. As an interdisciplinary team, she’s more interested in a student’s drive to advance their group’s projects than the particular field of study they may be coming from.
“You really have to be willing to learn,” she says. “To me, I feel that’s a very general perspective we look for in a successful graduate student. You have to realize, when you are in research, every project you’re solving is a new project. It’s a solvable new problem.” During this process, Yang goes on, students have to pick up new skill sets, and have an excitement for it.
Students, and indeed Professor Yang, herself, are deemed successful due to their confidence, their collaborative studies, and unending hunger to keep learning and adapting to new hurdles along the path to greater and wider-spread solutions.
Bravery, to Professor Yang, drives the confidence that has led to so much success in her research. “They believe, ‘as long as I learn, I’ll be able to solve this problem.’”