Mohamad Sawan is Chair Professor in Westlake University, Hangzhou, China, and Emeritus Professor in Polytechnique Montreal, Canada. He is the founder and director of the Center of Excellence in Biomedical Research on Advances-on-Chips Neurotechnologies (CenBRAIN Neurotech) in Westlake University, Hangzhou, China, and of the Polystim Neurotech Lab in Polytechnique Montreal. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada. He is Co-Founder, Associate Editor and was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (2016-2019). He is the founder of the flagship IEEE International NEWCAS conference and co-founder of the International IEEE-BioCAS and IEEE-AICAS Conferences. He was General Chair hosting both the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) and the 2020 IEEE International Medicine, Biology and Engineering Conference (EMBC). He was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Smart Medical Devices (2001-2015), and was leading the Microsystems Strategic Alliance of Quebec (ReSMiQ), Canada (1999-2018). Dr. Sawan published more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers, one Handbook, three books, 13 book chapters, and 12 patents, and 20 other patents are pending. He received several awards, among them the most prestigious and first Polytechnique Montreal Research and Innovation Award, the J.A. Bombardier and Jacques-Rousseau Awards from the ACFAS, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, the Medal of Merit from the President of Lebanon, the Barbara Turnbull Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Shanghai International Collaboration Award, the Zhejiang Westlake Friendship Award, and the Qianjiang Friendship Ambassador Award. Dr. Sawan is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Engineering Institutes of Canada, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), and an “Officer” of the National Order of Quebec.

Mohamad Sawan main research interests were initiated by bridging microelectronics with biomedical engineering, which was planned to introduce smart medical devices (SMDs). These AMDs are dedicated to improving the quality of human life. He focuses on designing, implementing, and validating wearable and implantable microsystems to restore lost sensory abilities and mitigate malfunctioning organs through monitoring healthcare parameters (signals, images, pressure, etc) and neuromuscular electrical/optic stimulation. Also, Dr. Sawan is interested in neuromorphic implementations, machine and deep learning techniques and neural network-based chipsets. These research activities are motivated by increasing interests to diagnosis neurodegenerative diseases and to address them through custom closed-loop brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). The later are dedicated to neuromodulation applications and can be wearable or implantable neuroprostheses. These tools are built around systems-on-chips and may include cores to predict health evolution conditions. Bioelectronic circuits and systems are used to implement the required BMIs dealing with multidimensional design challenges such as small volume devices, reliable implantable systems, efficient power management, low-power and high-data rate wireless bidirectional near and far field communication interfaces.

Case studies include vision, epilepsy, stroke, addictions, etc. Also, cells monitoring, and manipulations are consistent options for efficient neural diseases studies.

[1] SAWAN, M., “Handbook of Biochips: Integrated Circuits and Systems for Biology and Medicine”, Springer, 2022, 1460 pages

[2] SAWAN M., YANG J., TARKHAN M., CHEN J., WANG M., WANG Ch., XIA F., CHEN Y., "Emerging Trends of Biomedical Circuits and Systems", Foundations and Trends in Integrated Circuits and Systems: Vol. 1: No. 4, 2021, pp. 217-411.

[3] SAWAN, M., SALAM, M.T., LELAN, J., KASSAB, A., GELINAS, S., VANNASING, P., LESAGE, F., NGUYEN, D., LASSONDE, M, “Wireless Recording Systems: From Non-Invasive EEG-NIRS To Invasive EEG Devices”, IEEE-Trans. on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Vol. 7, No. 2, Apr. 2013, pp. 186-195.

[4] SAWAN, M., HASHEMI, S., SEHIL, M., AWWAD, F., HAJJ-HASSAN, M., KHOUAS, A., «Multi coils-based inductive links dedicated to power up implantable medical devices: modelling, design and experimental results» Biomedical Micro devices, Vol. 11, No. 5, October 2009, pp. 1059-1070.

[5] SAWAN, M., HU, Y., COULOMBE, J., “Wireless Smart Implants Dedicated to Multichannel Monitoring and Microstimulation”, Invited paper in IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, Vol. 5, April 2005, pp. 21-39.