The human body is pliable and composed mainly of water, which is filled with ions. Electronics, by contrast, are typically built from rigid, electronically conductive materials. To facilitate the development of better bioelectronics, bridging those two worlds is the main research goal of Yuanwen Jiang, Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Penn Engineering.

“I work to align the inherent differences between the biological and artificial domains,” says Jiang. “The material characteristics of biological systems are soft, squishy, water-containing and made up of an ionic medium. Electronics, on the other hand, are made up of materials that are mostly silicon or semiconductor-based solid electronic conductors, making it hard to get these two systems to interact well and for sustained periods of time.”

To create bioelectronic devices that can remain stable, precise and functional inside the body, Jiang has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to address this mismatch, with a primary focus on devices targeting the nervous system.

His CAREER project, “Chronically Stable, High-Precision, Multimodal Bioelectronic Platform for Longitudinal In-Situ Interrogation of Peripheral Nerve Injury,” will develop implantable devices that continuously monitor the progression of peripheral nerve injuries, capturing both electrical signals associated with nerve function and molecular biomarkers associated with injury and recovery.

By collecting that information over time, Jiang hopes to provide a more complete picture of how nerve injuries progress and how patients respond to treatment.

Jiang did not begin his career thinking specifically about nerve implants. His path started in chemistry.

“I was trained in chemistry, both in my undergraduate studies and my Ph.D., but my Ph.D. research was actually in material chemistry, focusing on the interface between nanomaterials and biological systems,” says Jiang. “This particular field has always been interested in how signals are sent and received between the physical world and our biological system. That nano-bio interface in grad school was the key starting point of my research.”

Today, Jiang’s group at Penn Engineering works at the intersection of materials science, electronics and biology. Some of the work is aimed at fundamental questions about how electronic devices can help researchers understand biological systems. Other projects focus on translating those technologies into tools for human health, including devices that can monitor biological signals or potentially help restore lost function.

Connecting both of those goals is the challenge of what kind of material to use. 

“We are trying to shift the design principles and create things from the bottom up, rather than using specific tools to optimize a pre-existing material’s performance,” says Jiang.

His recent work is already laying the foundation for this approach to long-term bioelectronics. In a 2026 paper in Nature Electronics, his team developed a new architecture called “TopoLock” that helps electronic devices withstand the repeated movement and mechanical stresses they encounter inside the body. By combining a three-dimensional interlocking structure with chemical bonds, the researchers created devices capable of long-term electrical recording, stimulation and chemical sensing in animal models. The work addresses a challenge that is central to Jiang’s CAREER project: how to maintain a reliable connection between electronics and living tissue over time, even as the body moves, heals and changes.

“The exciting applications from this work extend beyond advances in materials science,” says Jiang. “If devices are better designed to work in the body for longer periods of time, we can understand how nerve injury affects function and eventually help inform personalized diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for real patients.”

Today, researchers can use techniques such as microscopy to examine injured nerves, or analyze tissue after an experiment has ended. But those approaches provide snapshots rather than a continuous view of what is happening as an injury develops and heals.

“Currently we do not have a tool that allows us to continuously monitor local signals in the body such as nerve functions, electric signals and nerve injury biomarkers,” says Jiang. “Our work aims to design something that can do this for long periods of time.”

The five-year project will focus on developing devices that can maintain a stable connection with nerve tissue while simultaneously detecting multiple signals. Jiang’s team will then test the technology in an animal model of nerve injury, tracking changes during both injury and recovery.

“The goal is not simply to collect more data,” he says. “Continuous measurements could reveal relationships between different aspects of nerve injury that are difficult to see when researchers only examine tissue at individual points in time.”

That information could eventually help researchers better understand why some nerves recover while others do not, as well as inform the development of new treatments and prosthetic technologies.

Nerve interfaces raise possibilities for restoring or modifying how people experience the world. Jiang describes a future in which electronic systems could potentially replace some functions lost after nerve damage by sensing stimuli such as pressure or temperature and communicating that information to the nervous system.

“If you have a damaged nerve, you can create a sensor from the distal end,” he explains. “You can collect the data locally from a finger with nerve damage or a prosthetic foot for example, and then send that signal to the brain by bypassing the damaged or absent nerve. It can become a replacement for the real sensation, restoring some quality of life that those with nerve damage may have lost.”

In principle, similar interfaces could also be used to modulate sensation, including pain.

“The interface between our bodies, our biological systems, and external electronics will always exist,” says Jiang. “So how can we bridge the gap to create new possibilities in the realms of pain management, sensation restoration and communication between people and machines? Those are precisely the questions we are working on.”

The CAREER Award also gives Jiang an opportunity to think about who will carry this field forward.

As part of the project, Jiang will work with The Franklin Institute as a mentor in the STEM Scholars program, a four-year college and career preparation program that serves Philadelphia-area students in grades 9-12, aiming to reach those from communities historically underrepresented in STEM. Jiang’s portion of the program will engage students in hands-on activities such as biosensor fabrication and help establish a new bioelectronics curriculum.

Jiang knows that bioelectronics does not fit neatly into a single discipline. His own research journey moved from chemistry into materials science and eventually into biological and medical applications. He hopes to give students opportunities to see those connections earlier in their education.

“Bioelectronics requires researchers who are comfortable moving between questions about materials, devices and biology rather than staying within the boundaries of a single field,” he says. “My approach is to give students a strong foundation in their own area while encouraging them to understand how their work connects to the larger biological problem.”

Learn more about Yuanwen Jiang’s work here.