Special Issue on Advances in Microwaves and RF for Life Sciences Applications
By Nitish Thakor
This month we bring you news on advances in the application of microwaves and RF to Life Sciences, and particularly to medicine. We thank Jung-chih Chiao and Mohammad-Reza Tofighi for serving as Guest Editors for this special issue. Their work has been invaluable in bringing together this set of articles.
IMS-2013 focussed the spotlight on promising new ways that microwaves and RF are finding application in medicine. In their lead article, Jung-chih Chiao and Mohammad-Reza Tofighi provide an introduction to the activities in IMS-2013 that featured this work.
In our video interview, we asked Bill Saltzstein of connectBlue Inc. to explain the benefits of Low Power Bluetooth for mobile monitoring applications.
We feature four original articles relating to presentations made at IMS-2013:
1. “Non-invasive microwave spectroscopy-based biosensor for single cell analysis: toward early diagnostic and personalized medicine” by Katia Grenier, David Dubuc, Mary Poupot and Jean-Jacques Fournié by Katia Grenier, David Dubuc, Mary Poupot and Jean-Jacques Fournié.
2. “Microwave-based Noninvasive Sensors for Biomedical Applications” by G. Guarin, M. Hofmann, G. Fischer, R. Weigel, and D. Kissinger
3. “Microchamber for Broadband Electrical Detection of Biological Cells” by Cristiano Palego, Caterina Merla, Yaqing Ning, Caroline Multari, Xuanhong Cheng and James C. M. Hwang
4. “Biomedical Radar for Contactless Health Monitoring” by Marco Mercuri, Ping Jack Soh, and Dominique Schreurs.
We hope you will find these of great interest, and we always welcome your feedback and suggestions at lsnews@ieee.org.
J.-C. Chiao is Greene endowed professor and Garrett endowed professor of Electrical Engineering at University of Texas - Arlington; and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Internal Medicine Department at UT-Southwestern, Medical Center. 
Mohammad-Reza Tofighi is an associate professor of electrical engineering with the Capital College, Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, PA. He conducts research on wireless implants, biomedical antennas, medical applications of microwave radiometry, and complex permittivity measurement of tissues using time and frequency domain methods. 
Bill Saltzstein is the President of connectBlue Inc., a leading provider of industrial and medical wireless solutions. Bill is also the Medical Business Development Director and joined connectBlue in February of 2011 with a vision to extend medical care out of the traditional environments through the use of wireless technologies. 
Katia Grenier (S'99 -M'03) received her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toulouse, France. She is now with the LAAS-CNRS lab, in France, where her research interests are focused on the development of fluidic-based microsystems for biological and medical applications as well as for reconfigurable wireless. 
David Dubuc (S'99, M'03) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France. He is an Associate Professor with the University of Toulouse, and a Researcher with the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of System part of National Scientific Research Center (LAAS-CNRS), Toulouse, France. His research interests include the development of microwave circuits integrated due to microtechnologies and their application to wireless telecommunication and biology. 
Mary Poupot received her PhD degree in Biochemistry from the University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France. She is a Researcher at the Cancer Research Center of Toulouse. Her research interests are based on the impact of the tumor microenvironment on the survey of cancer cell in particular in hematopoietic diseases. 
Jean-Jacques Fournié received his Ph.D. degree in microbial biochemistry from the University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France. He is currently heading the Cancer Research Center of Toulouse (CRCT), France. His fields of scientific expertise are biochemistry, pharmacology, immunology and cancer. 
Gustavo Guarin is currently pursuing his PhD in Electric Engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He works at the Institute for Electronic Engineering with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr.-Ing. habil. Robert Weigel and with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Georg Fischer. The focus of his research is on Ultra-Wideband Microwave Sensors for spectroscopy applications in biomedicine. 
Maximilian Hofmann received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical, electronic and communications engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany. He joined the Institute for Electronics Engineering, Erlangen, Germany, as a Research Assistant. 
Dietmar Kissinger received the Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany. He holds a position as Lecturer and Head of the RF Integrated Sensors Group at the Institute for Electronics Engineering. His research interests include silicon-based microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits as well as wireless sensors and communication systems for ultra-low power, automotive, industrial, security, and medical applications. 
Dr. Cristiano Palego is a senior lecturer in Smart Sensors and Instrumentation at Bangor University, UK and a visiting research scientist at Lehigh University, USA. He received the Ph.D. degree in Microwave Engineering and Optoelectronics from the University of Limoges, France. He is currently a research scientist at Lehigh. His interests include electromagnetic theory, micro/nanotechnology and biomedical research as well as RF-MEMS for reconfigurable frontends, antenna arrays, and high-power applications. 
Dr. Caterina Merla received the Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza," Italy. She is currently with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Research Centre in Rome and a Visiting Research Scientist at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. Her research interests are mainly focused on the microdosimetric evaluation of the electromagnetic (EM) field at single cell level, biological sample dielectric measurements, and design and dosimetry of exposure systems oriented to EM protection studies and medical applications. 
Yaqing Ning is currently working toward her Ph.D. degree at Lehigh University. She is involved in research on RF MEMS capacitive switches and phase shifters, as well as on biomedical devices for detection purposes. She specializes in 3D electromagnetic simulation using finite element methods. 
Caroline Multari is currently working towards her Ph.D. at Lehigh University in Materials Science and Engineering, focusing on research in point-of-care microfluidic biosensors and developing polymeric biomaterials for bioparticle capture. 
Dr. Xuanhong Cheng is the Rossin Assistant professor of Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh University. She received her Ph.D. in bioengineering at University of Washington. She joined Lehigh University, where her current research interest is focused on developing new nanomaterials and microfluidic platforms to analyze intact, live bioparticles, such as cells and pathogens at the point of need. 
Prof. James C. M. Hwang received the Ph.D. degree in materials science from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He joined Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA as a Professor of electrical engineering and Director of the Compound Semiconductor Technology Laboratory. His current research interests include MEMS, microwave and photonic devices and integrated circuits, and bio-electromagnetics. 
Marco Mercuri is currently working towards the Ph.D degree within the TELEMIC research group of the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), KU Leuven, Belgium. His research interests include biomedical applications of microwave/RF, wireless sensors, and microwave/millimeter-wave measurements. 
Ping Jack Soh is currently working towards his Ph.D in the ESAT-TELEMIC Research Division, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. His research interests include planar antennas, flexible/textile antennas, on-body communication, metamaterials, passive microwave components and microwave measurements. 
Dominique Schreurs received the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. She is a Full Professor at KU Leuven. Her main research interests concern the (non)linear characterization and modelling of microwave devices and circuits, as well as (non)linear hybrid and integrated circuit design for telecommunications and biomedical applications.