Azita Emami

Azita Emami-Neyestanak is the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at Caltech. Emami works on low-power mixed-mode circuits in scalable technologies. She is Executive Officer of the Department of Electrical Engineering and an investigator in the Heritage Medical Research Institute.

Early life and education Emami was born in Nain, Iran. She studied at an all-girls high school, where she became interested in hardware design. She earned her bachelor's degree in electronic engineering at the Sharif University of Technology in 1996. At Stanford University she was a member of the very-large-scale-integrated (VLSI) research group, where she worked on integrated circuits and system design. She joined the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 2004, working on communication technologies.

Research and career Emami joined the California Institute of Technology in 2007. She was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to investigate integrated systems in 2008, studying the electro-optical connects in integrated systems. She was awarded an Okawa Foundation grant in 2010, allowing her to investigate the design of high performance sensors. In 2015 Emami was appointed as a Principal Investigator of the Heritage Medical Research Institute.

Emami's work involves the design of energy efficient ways to interface the information and physical worlds. Her research group, MICS (Mixed-mode Integrated Circuits and Systems), study circuits for data communication, sensing and biomedical devices. She focusses on low-power consumption devices, such as microdevices that can act as photoreceptors for people who suffer from vision loss. She achieves low power consumption by using clocking techniques. Designing electronic components for the eye is not trivial - unlike most circuitry, they cannot be flat. Emami collaborated with an origami expert to develop an implant that could match the contour of a retina. To ensure the sensors are biocompatible, Emami encapsulated them in 'Parylene-on-oil', a silicone-oil bubble surrounded by Parylene. Working with Axel Scherer, Emami has developed an implantable glucose monitor that can transmit information via bluetooth to a wearable reader. Emami has developed a biosensor that can continuously monitor vital information, including blood sugar, pH levels and cortisol, as well as acting as a therapeutic system, releasing insulin or other medicine. Her group are currently evaluating the performance of ATOMS in vitro and in vivo, monitoring device migration in live mice and creating the platform that will allow navigation in high-precision surgery. She has also investigated efficient neural interfaces. In 2017 Emami was appointed the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at Caltech. The Chair is endowed by the co-founders of Panda Express.

Academic service Emami is the Associate Editor for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Journal of Solid State Circuits and has served as the IEEE SSCS distinguished lecturer. She serves as the Executive Officer of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. Alongside her academic research, Emami works on initiatives to improve diversity in engineering.