Rice University, magnetoelectric bioelectronics labs
Official site → Houston, TX, USA
Rice magnetoelectric bioelectronics
Rice’s current faculty profiles identify Jacob T. Robinson as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering, and Kaiyuan Yang as Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Yang leads the Secure and Intelligent Micro-Systems (SIMS) Lab. These are distinct laboratories with overlapping bioelectronics work, not one combined lab.
The Robinson lab describes magnetoelectric materials for wireless power and communication, miniature brain stimulators and distributed implant networks. The SIMS project page describes low-power implant electronics and magnetoelectric or optical power/data transfer, and lists the 2022 endovascular ME-BIT paper. Research directions are not proof that every listed device has all these functions.
This brief is separate from Rice’s Luan and Xie ultraflexible interface labs. A shared university does not assign one group’s hardware or animal results to another.
Cataloged work
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ME-BIT nerve stimulator, 2022 and its rat/pig application. Both faculty appear in the primary paper. Direct contact, vascular leads and separate delivery demonstrations are not one experiment. The catalog preserves conflicting animal counts and pulse-width descriptions.
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Distributed ME spinal IPGs, 2025 and the two-minipig spinal application. Robinson appears in the primary paper. This link does not assign the paper to Yang or make either lab the sole owner of the collaboration. Two then four implanted devices are distinct from six bench IPGs, 12 LED nodes and power-transfer experiments.
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Published DOT cortical stimulator, 2024, with two acute human tests and a separate chronic pig application. Primary affiliations include Rice and Motif. Direct cortex and dura-covered human placements are kept distinct.
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Endocisternal catheter/ME interface and its sheep study. The accessible 2023 preprint details are distinguished from the 2024 published abstract and supplement.
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Self-rectifying ME metamaterial and rat reflex/nerve-bridge application. A material-based rectifier is distinct from the microcontroller-based DOT and endocisternal platforms.
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PUF-addressed ME ASIC configuration, 2021-2022 and Hydra/rat tests. Shared-transmitter synchronization is distinct from demonstrated therapeutic cardiac or spinal use.
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MagNI current-controlled implant, 2020 and Hydra activation. Spinal pain relief is a proposed target, not a result of the Hydra or saline tests.
Evidence boundary
The cataloged studies demonstrate stimulation and delivery under their reported experimental conditions. Acute human motor activation is not a clinical treatment. The studies do not establish a human clinical treatment, chronic rehabilitation, a complete distributed neural-recording decoder or regulatory approval. The lab website’s pain-treatment and cardiac-pacing goals remain goals unless a specific primary study supports the result.
Long-term packaging, transmitter burden, placement sensitivity and exposure-standard limits remain device-specific. The 2025 acute spinal configuration cannot borrow chronic survival from earlier glass-packaged hardware. A general lab claim about bidirectional communication does not create a recording uplink in that spinal experiment.
Map coordinates are omitted; university addresses do not establish a precise laboratory location.
Primary sources
Discrete two-film predecessors
The 2020 PVDF headstage and fully implanted PZT package precede the single-film ASIC platforms. Their respective applications are STN Parkinsonian rat rotations and MFB place preference, with separate three-rat cohorts. Primary paper grounds the Rice and UTHealth affiliations; the hardware configurations and behavioral outcomes are not merged.