Prof. Takao SOMEYA

Professor, Dean of School of Engineering

University of Tokyo

someya@ee.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Organic transistors, flexible electronics, plastic integrated circuits, large-area sensors, and plastic actuators

Biography

Takao Someya was appointed dean of School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 2020, where he has been member of faculty since 1997 and professor since 2009. He also conducted research at Columbia University’s Nanocenter and at Bell Labs.

He served on the board of directors of the Material Research Society 2009-2011. He is also Chief Scientist at RIKEN and Team Leader at its Center for Emergent Matter Science since 2015. His expertise is stretchable and organic electronics, developing the world's first stretchable electronic skin for robotic application. He was awarded the 16th Leo Esaki Prize in 2019.

Electronic skins for the next-generation wearables

Abstract

The human skin is a large-area, multi-point, multi-modal, stretchable sensor, which has inspired the development of electronic skin for robots that simultaneously detect pressure and thermal distribution. By improving its conformability, the application of electronic skin has expanded from robots to next-generation wearables for human, reaching a point where ultrathin semiconductor membrane can be directly laminated onto the skin. Such intimate and conformal integration of electronics with the human skin allows continuous monitoring of health conditions for a long time, enabling personalization of medical care. The ultimate goal of the electronic skin is to non-invasively measure human activities under natural conditions, enabling electronic skin and human skin to interactively reinforce each other. In this talk, I will review recent progress in stretchable thin-film electronics for applications to robotics and next-generation wearables for medical applications and address issues and the future prospect of electronic skin.

Keynote Speakers