Alper Bozkurt

he/him/his
Professor & ASSIST Center Deputy Director
Engineering Building II (EB2) 3070
Bio
Dr. Alper Bozkurt performs research on how microsystems based tissue interfaces and physiological monitoring systems can be used to wirelessly interact with animals and crops that is raised in agricultural fields to enable new phenotypical data for smarter farming. This is one of the on-going efforts under Integrated Bionic MicroSystems Laboratory (iBionicS Lab) which has a vision to introduce conceptually novel animal-plant-machine interfaces to bridge artificial systems with biological organisms towards the next generation bionic cyber-physical systems. Such cyber-physical systems would be the building blocks of a new era where everything is connected to each other through the Internet of Things.
Biography: Alper Bozkurt is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and University Faculty Scholar at NC State University. He received a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 2010 working with Prof. Amit Lal on DARPA’s Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems program. His research team at NC State performs research on connecting biological organisms to the cloud to solve real life engineering problems in innovative ways. The ongoing funded projects include “insect-machine-interfaces” with remotely controlled biobotic insects for exploration and mapping after natural disasters, “canine-machine interfaces” to enable a computer assisted canine training system and remotely interact with canines and “plant-machine interfaces” to record biopotentials and impedances on crops and trees to monitor their stress response. His recent achievements were covered by media including BBC, CNN, National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Reuters. Bozkurt is a recipient of Calhoun Fellowship from Drexel University, Donald Kerr Award from Cornell University, Chancellor’s Innovation Award and William F. Lane Outstanding Teacher Award at NC State, the CAREER Award from National Science Foundation, IBM Faculty Award, IEEE Sensors Council Young Professional Award and was included in Popular Science Magazine’s Brilliant 10 list. His research team received best paper awards from The US Government Microcircuit Applications & Critical Technology Conference, IEEE Body Sensor Network Conference and IEEE Sensors Conference.
SHORT DESCRIPTION OF INTERESTS:
Dr. Bozkurt joined NCSU in August 2010. His research interests include development of microscale sensors, actuators and methodologies to unlock the mysteries of biological systems with an aim of engineering these systems directly or developing new engineering approaches by learning from these systems. His work related to Coastal Resilience Initiative includes behavioral monitors for mussels, physiological sensors for fishes, stress detection in plants and smart trapping of insects. His team develops novel sensors and provides wireless electronics prototyping support.
Publications
- Wearable Wireless Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy System for Cognitive Activity Monitoring , (2025)
- Wearable Wireless Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy System for Cognitive Activity Monitoring , BIOSENSORS-BASEL (2025)
- A Subcutaneously Injectable Implant for Multimodal Physiological Monitoring in Animals , IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL (2024)
- A Wireless Injectable Device for Multimodal Animal Physiological Monitoring , 2024 IEEE BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS CONFERENCE, BIOCAS 2024 (2024)
- A Wireless Miniature Injectable Device With Memory-Assisted Backscatter for Multimodal Animal Physiological Monitoring , IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING (2024)
- A Wireless Multimodal Physiological Monitoring ASIC for Animal Health Monitoring Injectable Devices , IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS (2024)
- Automated Depth Sensing-Based Computer Vision for Dog Tail Wagging Interpretation , ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ANIMAL-COMPUTER INTERACTION, ACI 2024 (2024)
- Evaluating Bacterial Nanocellulose Interfaces for Recording Surface Biopotentials from Plants , SENSORS (2024)
- Exploring the Dynamics of Canine-Assisted Interactions: A Wearable Approach to Understanding Interspecies Well-Being , ANIMALS (2024)
- Preclinical Evaluation of a Wearable Wristband With Compressed-Sensing Based Photoplethysmography , IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING (2024)