Highlight
IGERT-Lifechips Trainee Mark Merlo presents at the EMBC
Achievement/Results
NSF Funded IGERT-Lifechips fellow Mark Merlo, a graduate student from the department of Biomedical Engineering at UC-Irvine attended the 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) in Vancouver, Canada. The event took place on September 2nd-6th in 2008. Here he was not just an attendee but also a presenter. His presentation titled was “Remotely Powered and Wirelessly Controlled Intraoral Electrolarynx” which is also the title of his paper that was published from the conference.
His presentation was about Electrolarynx devices – composed of three components of dental unit, external unitl, and control electronics – capable of restoring the voice of many who would otherwise be unable to speak. Current intraoral electrolarynx devices either have unappealing transoral tubes or are too large to easily fit in the mouth. Mark Merlo introduces the a novel, remotely powered and wirelessly controlled intraoral electrolarynx that addresses these issues. Due to its size, the intraoral part of the device is easily embedded into a maxillary denture or a dental appliance.
Characteristics of the device, including operating distance, positional sensitivity and orientation sensitivity were investigated. The results show that the device can be remotely powered and wirelessly controlled for use as an intraoral electrolarynx. Speech intelligibility of the device is not presented, but will be in future studies.
For this project, Mark Merlo had worked closely with Lifechips Principal Investigator G.P. Li and Co-Principal Investigator and both are from the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC-Irvine. He also collaborated with another graduate student from the lab of Professor Abe Lee who is also a Co-Principal Investigator.
Address Goals
Being a speaker at the EMBC, NSF funded Lifechips trainee Mark Merlo was able to gain professional development and communication skills. Mark Merlo was able to deliver his research to an international audience and this experience is very valuable both to him personally and the program as a whole. Lifechips program strongly encourages and supports students to reach out to the outside world by attending conferences or presenting their research as a contribution to science world.
