Christina Tringides, a recently hired assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering and a CPRIT Scholar, has been named to the 2024 MIT Technology Review’s “35 under 35.”
The journal credits Tringides with devising a new type of electrocorticogram (ECoG), “a thin gadget that sits directly on the brain during an invasive procedure, like the removal of a tumor or tissue responsible for epilepsy, and records its electrical activity.”
Tringides, 31, earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University/MIT in biophysics and health science technology in 2022. Since then she has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Eidgenössische Technische Hochshule Zürich, Switzerland. She is a core member of the Neuroengineering Initiative at Rice.
Much of her research focuses on developing new materials and neurotechnologies to interface with the nervous system, from the cell to the organ level, and for both in vivo and in vitro applications. She joined the faculty on July 1.
“The device will help surgeons determine what tissue to remove and what to leave alone. “If they are too aggressive with a tumor, for example, they might extract brain tissue that’s responsible for movement or speech,” Tringides said.
Currently, ECoGs are made of metal electrodes attached to a plastic sheath. The devices are stiff while the brain is soft. Tringides compares them to placing a spatula on top of tofu.
“They don’t conform to the contours of the brain, which is what surgeons would like,” she said. “That reduces the device’s accuracy and can damage underlying neurons.”
To fashion a more effective device, Tringides used hydrogels, a type of polymer that exhibits qualities of both liquids and solids, like the brain. She adapted a hydrogel derived from alginate, a substance occurring naturally in seaweed, to create a film that shares the brain’s mechanical properties and can conform to its shape.
Tringides then created viscoelastic electronic materials to replace metal films, by embedding conductive nanomaterials made from carbon nanotubes and flakes of graphene, a conductive form of carbon, into a hydrogel matrix. She embedded these electrodes into the matrix for a fully viscoelastic ECoG.
Her prototype has been used to record and map signals in the brains of rats, including their auditory cortex, responsible for hearing, which required it to bend more than 180 degrees.
Since 1999, the MIT Technology Review has annually named young researchers to its “35 Innovators Under 35” list.