ASSIST Center

The Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) Center is a new NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) that will develop and employ nano-enabled energy harvesting, energy storage, nanodevices and sensors to create innovative battery-free, body-powered, and wearable health monitoring systems. The four partner schools in the center are NC State, UVA, Penn State, and Florida International University. Our group is leading the integration of the center technologies into a complete electrical system for wearable health and personal environmental monitoring.

The ASSIST center envisions a paradigm shift in health informatics enabled by wearable nanotechnologies that monitor individual health parameters and environmental exposures. Long-term sensing will enable patients, doctors, and scientists to make direct correlations between health and environmental toxins leading to chronic disease prediction, management and treatment. ASSIST advances will accelerate environmental health research and clinical trials as well as inform environmental policy.

The integrated sensor nodes that we are developing for ASSIST will include advanced energy harvesting and energy storage materials, novel devices, and nano sensors developed in the center. A BSN platform SoC, inspired by our prior work in this area, will provide data acquisition, power delivery and management, computation, data storage, and communication for the system. ASSIST will deploy its technology in a wearable form factor like a wristband or patch and then evaluate it in testbeds for both personal wellness and personal environmental monitoring.