Katia Vega created “Body Modification Technologies”: wearable devices for biosensing through novel form factors with embedded biosensors that interact with body fluids. Current practices for body modification includes piercing, tattooing, branding, binding, bodybuilding, and inserting implants. By establishing new collaborations with surgeons, cosmetics companies, beauty salons, and dermatologists, this project will investigate placing biosensors on and underneath the skin through body modification materials–lipstick, hair dye, piercings and tattoos. Biosensors in direct contact with body fluids can significantly improve biological sensing data. This project will develop new knowledge about methods and effects of transforming the body into a bio-display in order to expose information from metabolism that is usually imperceptible. Potential applications include monitoring illnesses, hormonal changes, dental health, eating disorders, stress tracking, pharmacokinetics, maintaining a culture of health in communities, and sensing environmental changes such as pollution, temperature and UV. Expected outcomes include: (1) fabrication processes for creating the form factors that embed biosensors into body modification materials; (2) design and implementation of hardware and software for devices and mobile applications; (3) dissemination of benchmarking datasets and methods for evaluating these technologies; and (4) derivation of a set of principles and implications on privacy, safety, bio-compatibility, and feminist design.
Katia Vega showcased the potential of Body Modification Technologies with several projects: The Dermal Abyss, braceIO, Sweatcessory. During these projects, she developed the skills required for biotech protocol preparation, biotech equipment use and data analysis, biosensor extraction, and biosensor preparation and characterization. Future works on this approach will be supported for the next 5 years by her recent NSF CAREER award.
Honors and Awards
- NSF CAREER 2022 (2022 – 2027). “Body Modification Technologies”. PI: Katia Vega. The NSF CAREER program is a Foundation wide activity that offers NSF‘s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department. Funding rate (IIS): 17%. Total: $589,377.
- Johnson & Johnson (2019 – 2022) Fellowship: “Women in in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing and Design (WiSTEM2D) ”. PI: Katia Vega. Total: $150,000.
- Athena Award (2021, USA) – Women in Tech Initiative at UC.
- International Symposium in Wearable Computing (ISWC 17, Hawaii) – Paper Honorable Mention: The Dermal Abyss.
- SXSW (2018, USA) – INTERACTIVE AWARDS. SciFi No Longer.
A) The Dermal Abyss
The Dermal Abyss (d-abyss) presents an approach to biointerfaces in which the body surface is rendered as an interactive display by patterning biosensors into the skin to produce color changes in response to biomarker variations in the interstitial fluid. It combines advances in biotechnology with traditional methods in tattoo artistry. d-abyss is designed to use the aesthetics, permanence, and visible nature of tattoos to encode information. Traditional inks are replaced with colorimetric and fluorescent biosensors that can report on the concentration of sodium, glucose, and pH in the interstitial fluid of the skin. We report the preliminary evaluation of these biosensors in an ex vivo skin model, assessing their visibility from the dermis. We describe different applications of d-abyss in the medical, lifestyle, and security domains. This work is a proof of concept of a platform in which the skin reveals information inside the body, tattoos form wearable displays within the skin, and the body’s metabolism works as an input for the d-abyss biosensors.
Publications:
Vega, Katia, Nan Jiang, Xin Liu, Viirj Kan, Nick Barry, Pattie Maes, Ali Yetisen, and Joe Paradiso. “The dermal abyss: Interfacing with the skin by tattooing biosensors.” In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, pp. 138-145. 2017. Honorable mention paper award.
Yetisen, Ali K., Rosalia Moreddu, Sarah Seifi, Nan Jiang, Katia Vega, Xingchen Dong, Jie Dong et al. “Dermal tattoo biosensors for colorimetric metabolite detection.” Angewandte Chemie 131, no. 31 (2019): 10616-10623.
Vega, Katia, Nan Jiang, Xin Liu, Viirj Kan, Nick Barry, Pattie Maes, Ali K. Yetisan, and Joe Paradiso. “The Dermal Abyss: Color-Changing Tattoos for Medical Diagnostics.” GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications 22, no. 2 (2018): 38-42.
Exhibitions:
Ars Electronica, ISEA, Fort Mason, SXSW, Ars Electronica Center, Belcorp, Re.Riddle.
B) braceIO
Dental braces are a semi-permanent dental treatment that are in direct contact with our metabolism (saliva), food and liquids we ingest, and our environment while smiling or talking. This paper introduces braceIO, biochemical ligatures on dental braces that change colors depending on saliva concentration levels (pH, nitric oxide and acid uric), and can be read by an external device. This work presents our fabrication process of the ligatures and external device, and the technical evaluation of the absorption time, colorimetric measurement tests and the color map to the biosensor level in the app. This project aims to maintain the shape, wearability and aesthetics of traditional ligatures but with embedded biosensors. We propose a novel device that senses metabolism changes with a different biosensor ligature worn in each tooth to access multiple biodata and create seamless interactive devices.
Publication:
Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Ali K. Yetisen, and Katia Vega. 2020. BraceIO: biosensing through hydrogel dental ligatures. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC ’20). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3410531.3414290
C) Sweatcessory
Sweat contains various analytes (biochemical data) that can be used to monitor health. Electrochemical sweat biosensors non-invasively monitor analytes via an electrode in contact with the skin. We introduce Sweatcessory, a novel form factor (a wearable necklace) with a sodium-detecting sweat biosensor whose data can be viewed in a Bluetooth web app. We present a design rationale for sweat biosensor form factors, our implementation process for Sweatcessory, an app for visualization, and an electrode functional evaluation.
Publication
Meredith Young-Ng, Grace Chen, Danielle Kiyama, Anna-Sofia Giannicola, Erkin Şeker, and Katia Vega. 2022. Sweatcessory: a wearable necklace for sensing biological data in sweat. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp/ISWC ’22 Adjunct), September 11–15, 2022, Cambridge, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544793.3560342
Exhibition
3D Fashion Week, Perú.