welcome to the science for the public lecture series science for the public is an organization committed to bringing science information and issues to the general public this is our website for our program  evening i mean van step and i welcome you to contemporary science issues and innovations tonight we learn about some exciting medical innovations in nanotechnology distinguished guests leads a research team that's been receiving a lot of praise lately dr samir some who sali is professor of electrical engineering at tufts university he serves on editorial boards and on committees of professional organizations and conferences dr sancha sali snatch lab is famous for cutting edge research it multiple interdisciplinary areas and especially for nano devices that then if it medicine and the life sciences sally explains how nanotechnology works and particularly how it's revolutionizing medicine the example of interest is the nano labs development of flexible with a little background about what nanotechnology is because it's unfamiliar to a number of people so nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate and use  technology it has come about because of the technology to lead vance's we've had recently where we can literally print things that are that small and can fabricate devices and wait for the technology so it's amazing how these actually the people the civilization or many years have been actually using nanotechnology and they were not aware of it and if you  that have been embedded into glass like gold and silver copper they tried all different kinds of our laws and metals and they gave beautiful colors and and they realized that they could make amazing glasses they also made that are very stiff cannot be bent when you make them that no skill can exhibit flexibility things that are not chemically reactive in bulk form become chemically reactive when  scale and if you can even have materials that have completely different properties compared to the bulk solid counterparts so looking at those there are a lot of possibilities  and and so on so that's one thing information and perhaps information processing and stuff are there any difficulties with working at that scale think of like at those at the scale and that when you make when you make things that small you do have electronic transport happening at much faster speeds faster and so if you look at  computing power that be having a computer today is basically because these transistors that are responsible for electronic transport the control electronic transfer the turn them on and off the switch that go to that form the underlying fundamental unit of any circuitry are getting smaller and smaller the intel is able to make ten transistors yeah it's like say the things for cations in medicine and life sciences so that's where basically we've been working on and let's go to that for sure because this is really exciting there's a lot happening and we don't get a lot of information from the media have this impression that people are not aware of what's going on and it's extremely important the whole new areas so your lab covers a lot of and even a single cell level can mean defeat add that level given that you had so much advances in technology we should be at the stage where we can interact with cells tissues and challenge of interfacing with cells all of them said tissues and so we've been making sensors that can sense the cells and the tissues and organs we've been making devices that read what the cells are doing the tissue are doing and have to say that beyond the activity that's going on in my group that have been a lot of advances in the field of nanotechnology in this particular frontier people have been there are many other p k sions you could also people have many sensors that and there are sensitive to single molecule the presence of single molecule in it's and wire in mint and that would not have been possible with for precisely doing this interfacing with cells tissues and organs ah and this took you for example to smarts more and that's gotten so much press yes lately could we know about this because this is this is and if you look at the sensors or of the devices that you see around today they are typically made on hard material yes and they and they are not flexible and they are and you can never really see them same properties as the tissue itself and so we asked ourselves how why is this not possible and what would be the solution what would it take to make something and this answer was surprisingly simple home and the surgical side gets infected and it's sometimes too late to undo what has happened so would be nice if these threads were able to sense and tell the sensing threads and the sensing threads here are shown as they could be physical sensors they can monitor temperature they can monitor whether strain they can monitor ph they can also monitor glucose they can monitor yellow mation right and once the sense is the electronic output that is generated is then routed to circuit board a small tiny circuit board that sitting on top of the scale and so that's basically shown on the  targeted this for chronic wounds chronic wounds and to make sure that they are healing and to wonder whether that is really amazing that's better than anything out there i would imagine because you got instant information is there any risk with that with the thread it's with this with the smart thread as any possibility of a problem with a very good question and so this is an ongoing area of research but threats come in many for sensing materials which are based on different nanomaterials and so we do have to think about possible toxicity from these now i'm sure and so that's an ongoing research that we have to look chronic implants one has to go through right and either that's true for the whole field or any innovation event that matter but it sounds like so far very very good yet i have yes you know yeah often you look at and this is basically one of the underlying philosophy of doing research try to find solutions that are there are simple and elegant and when we nano fibrous the fact that they can pull the fluid from one end to the other th this is very exciting i'm sure when you discover this you are probably we all very very pleased because it sounds like it makes a great leap forward you can do this very careful monitoring with something that that as in surgery has a lot of risk with people that are already compromised in terms of their immune systems and stuff and this is just a tremendous advantage can you tell us about other things that you do in your lab i know you do a number of different kinds of things and inner disciplinary is that unusual so i think science if you look at  these were formed hundreds of years ago and the problems of you're facing today the solutions are at the interdisciplinary level where we have to collaborate and interact with scientists and researchers in other disciplines to come up with solutions to these problems and nanotechnologies one such field where i use the them physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials to engineer with surgeons and clinical services in the future so you can see this is a very massive disciplinary and it's important to do that and so the solutions to these kind of challenging problems can only happen when when we have different brains from different areas say it's like a whole new organism in much of research that's right because it is so very very narrow it still is in many fields and people in certain fields can't even talk to each other because of these this narrowness but this is very exciting that's right you know that you're able to do it do you have any other sensor devices that you would like to tell us about yes so  call this thread diagnostics but we also have been were king on i've been you know i come from india and from the developing world or digitally and so i see that we've had so many advances in the world in  only driving factor here is can someone else replicate the sensors we build the devices we build so that they can use them locally in their environment so threads are fabulous because they are ubiquitous can you could construct something that could be sent to the field rather quickly and people there could produce the basics if they have the drama through a part of right time you have an epidemic of some kind you would want you want to have sensors that you can literally produce and distribute and so having a way to manufacture and build devices that are low many countries the bulk of countries don't have these you know the money for the labs and so on and the maybe the infrastructure to keep these things funded and  the but also the other thing is you mentioned that it doesn't take a whole lot of specialized skill you don't have to have a ph d to do this on the ground and that means that a lot of people could be drawn in to doing medicine and lots of things by this kind of experience everybody can help yes that's exactly and so this essentially democratising science and we have to make sure that more and more people find it fascinating not just to read about it or will to build it exactly being used for something that has a very high impact locally yes so it seems to me that's a very unique students working in the lab we do have undergraduates graduate students post dogs that are actually very much engaged in the research activity and all sort of following this underlying philosophy that group has been doing phenomenal work in that and so there are many other projects beyond license in medicine but all have the same sort of i guess right so that people could be in your lab that have diverse interests and you put all these heads together and say for in time that's a very exciting environmentalism but i imagine this field by itself is i can imagine conferences are probably with just new stuff all the is the divisional carbon material won a nobel prize of your years ago and now we have a new two dimensional materials there is a lot of research of new materials coming out with amazing i ask how did you get into this field i mean you know did you start out in electrical engineering moved toward this or were as a four year old you were already interested in a no i you know i i did electrical engineering i was always very interested electronics and so my background has been on building sort of kits so i like to put things together see things work and this whole revolution in microelectronics with micro fabrication ability to make things smaller in the clean room to get transistors that small to make circuits so that's what that essentially was my background so i was already looking at the advances in cell is extraordinary you can't see the thing it's invisible and it contains all this information all these components that have to work together and stuff and i would imagine somebody interested in circuits would really the entire machinery of the cell using artificial sort of devices would be a far way still a long way there but you were able to penetrate cells that this and want to look at this really is truly amazing year in terms of like the young people coming into this field is it very difficult being especially now you mentioned that it's almost by default it's got to be interdisciplinary today you've got to have your ear tuned to other people other experts is that a long process for people to train in this field i wouldn't say so  i have had as i was mentioning earlier you can enter into the field at any level it is so the problems of facing the planet problem that you can solve so i have even high school students who come in and you give you told them that these narrow materials florists really brightly what can you do with them it's a and you're already working  level and as amazingly some of these people are quarters on the things that we publish so there is definitely opportunities for so anyone who is interested in is fascinated by this topic just has to raise their hand and say  get in i know this much and can you give me the tools to sort of work with this and the answer is has to be always yes because if it's not then we are not doing our jobs right essentially as as as an academic and so very open to looking at problems differently we learn a different when you have opposed probably have much more depth and understanding and i school level you understand the way but i think there is a lot of opportunities for every yeah all innovate easily if you have a creative person they should be in heaven with the with this absolutely so that's a comforting thought that people can get into and i imagine that they will i hope that the media will be more supportive this way and get the word out i mean it's in science journals obviously but you don't see a lot otherwise about this extremely exciting field so i hope that will be addressed i hope that changes in the media and i hope they shine a light on your lab while they have done but i hope that they will in the future and it is wonderful to talk with you and i really appreciate your efforts so good luck and thank you thank you for having me it was wonderful t