ASSIST Wins Big at IDTechEx Wearable USA 2015

With a vision to achieve a comprehensive assessment of health and environment through wearable technologies that enable multi-modal sensing, the ASSIST Center excels at making hassle-free and reliable nano-enabled devices for on body sensing. At IDTechEx Wearable USA conference, the ASSIST Center and Dr. Zhu captivated judges winning an award: Best Wearable Material/Component Development.

With a vision to achieve a comprehensive assessment of health and environment through wearable technologies that enable multi-modal sensing, the ASSIST Center excels at making hassle-free and reliable nano-enabled devices for on body sensing. Dr. Yong Zhu, an ASSIST funded PI who has been collaborating with the Center since 2012, creates enabling technologies for the long-term ASSIST systems-based platforms. Notably, his work with silver nanowires embedded in polymers and wearable sensors for long-term ECG and EMG monitoring have garnered much attention.

At the most recent IDTechEx Wearable USA conference, America’s largest event on wearable technology held in Santa Clara, CA on November 18th and 19th, 2015, the ASSIST Center and Dr. Zhu captivated judges winning an award: Best Wearable Material/Component Development. Dr. Zhu’s work, development of wearable dry electrodes for electrophysiological sensing, swung the first place vote in a category of many accomplished submissions. This research features a “dry” electrode for long-term monitoring of electrophysiological signals such as electrocardiography (ECG), electromyography (EMG), and electroencephalography (EEG); the dry nature of this electrode allows contact with skin, without irritation from gels commonly used in the wet electrodes and signal degradation, over long periods of time. In addition to being innovatively dry, the electrode is also highly flexible, stretchable and compliant allowing for good contact with the skin and high quality sensing. Simple and cost effective to produce, the AgNW electrodes show less motion artefacts than Ag/AGCI electrodes on the market while showing comparable resting signals.

ASSIST would like to thank Dr. Zhu for his contributions to the ASSIST systems-based platforms and congratulate him and his team on the award win at Wearable USA 2015.

About ASSIST

The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) develops and employs nano-enabled energy harvesting, energy storage, nanodevices, and sensors to create innovative, battery-free and body-powered wearable health monitoring systems. This center of excellence received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2012 for five years of research, renewable out until 2022.

Media Contact
Shanna Rogers
Smroger2@ncsu.edu
919.515.0734
assist.ncsu.edu

Technical Contact
Dr. Yong Zhu
​yong_zhu@ncsu.edu
919.513.7735