Questions?

Electrical Engineering in Cambridge, MA

Hi my name is Nikhil Mehandru and I am currently a freshman at Harvard College, majoring in Bioengineering. I was hoping to get some help with a few projects I am doing this summer. Specifically, I will be in Cambridge this summer (at Harvard School of Eng and App Sci) doing research on medical devices. I need help with circuit design for the electrical engineering portions of one of my projects and would definitely like to do so throughout the entire summer. A Bit of Background: I have a bit of experience dealing with microcontrollers, since I recently took a class entitled Intro to EE, where for my final project, I constructed a circuit that could output the concentration of glucose detected on a test strip. Thus, I do have a basic understanding of the fundamental analog circuit components, including op amps, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, photodiodes/photoresistors, LCD modules, but I was hoping to take on a more ambitious project this summer. Specifically, I have done some research in the past on biosensing and microfluidics, and was hoping to develop an electronic pill, if you will, that would allow for pulsatile delivery of drugs via microfluidic channels. What I Need Help With: Essentially, I am not exactly sure of how to engineer a circuit on the scale of about say 6mm x 10mm that includes a basic microcontroller (low power consumption), a power source (I already have purchased batteries of the requisite voltage and physical size requirement), and PWM output (to control a pump of sorts, which would drive different microfluidic channels to release different drugs. Please let me know if you could help out with this project. If you are interested, I think a first meeting would help to fully explain the project and what I wish to accomplish. One of the most important things though, is that I really want to learn about the fundamentals of EE involved at that scale (circuits on the scale of mm^2 area). Thanks for your time.

Sent by Nikhil on 5/5/12