Dr. Hsin Chen received his PhD in Electronics from the Edinburgh University, UK in 2004. Afterwards, he joins the EE Dept. of the NTHU and is now appointed as a professor. Hsin has established the Neuro-Engineering Lab focusing on developing (1) novel neuro-electronic interfaces for neural prostheses and neural engineering; (2) neuromorphic algorithms and realising the algorithms as stochastic very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) microsystems; (3) bio-mimetic systems for advanced research in neuroscience. The latest research findings have been translated into two clinical applications: (1) the batteryless, implantable microsystem for investigating the mechanisms of the deep-brain stimulation; (2) the electronic nose for smelling out pneumonia infection. All these research results have been recognised by three National Innovation Awards, three MXIC Golden Silicon Awards, and Many Chip Design Awards. Moreover, to promote related research and international collaborations, Hsin has organised the International Workshop on Bio-inspired Systems and Prothetic Devices (BioPro) during 2009~2018. He received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the Taiwan Integrated Circuit Design (TICD) society in 2013, and Outstanding Young Researcher Grant during 2016~2019. He was invited as a visiting scholar in the Bordeaux Uni. in France in 2008, in the University d'Evry in France in 2011, and in the Inst. of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich in Switzerland in 2014. Finally, Hsin Chen is a member of the IEEE, the IEEE EMB, the IEEE CaS, and the TICD societies.

The Neuro-Engineering Lab (NEL) focuses on three closely-related research topics: (1) developing novel neuro-electronic interfaces (e.g. CMOS neuro-transistor arrays, carbon-nanotube microelectrodes) together with neural recording/stimulation microsystems for neural prostheses and neural engineering (yellow circle); (2) developing neuromorphic algorithms and realising the algorithms as stochastic very-large-scale- integration (VLSI) microsystems for recognising biomedical signals in implantable or portable devices (red circle), (3) developing bio-mimetic systems for advanced research in neuroscience (e.g. hybrid neural networks of biological and electronic neurons) and for innovative computation in deep-submicron technologies (e.g. stochastic spiking neural networks) (blue circle). From the three research areas sprout two branching activities (the orange ovals in Fig.1). First, the neuro-transistors are further applied to detecting biomolecules for in-situ disease diagnosis. In addition, microfluidics system is developed and integrated with VLSI microsystems to facilitate studying neuronal networks in-vitro. Secondly, innovative neuromorphic elements including noise-adaptable transistors and nonvolatile analogue memory are developed with standard CMOS technologies.

To fertilise these researches and to make these technologies really useful, the latest research findings have been applied to two clinical applications (green ovals in Fig.1): (1) the batteryless, implantable microsystem for investigating the mechanisms of the deep-brain stimulation (DBS) and thus for developing innovative treatments for the Parkinson’s disease; (2) the electronic nose with an embedded, adaptable neuromorphic system for smelling out pneumonia infection.