From ingestible pills that track gut health to smart bandages that can autonomously provide required treatment to wounds, Tufts University’s Sonkusale Research Lab has been engineering impactful patents with feasibility principles. The lab differs from ordinary research centers because of the high value it places on the feasibility and accessibility of its solutions. The lab’s mission is to build innovations that users can afford and reproduce without expensive materials. In my interview with Sameer Sonkusale, we discussed how their lab facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration and maximizes the accessibility of their innovations, as well as some of their current projects.
Sonkusale is a professor across departments in the School of Engineering. His work focuses on nano-scale biomedical and bioelectronic devices that create an impact on the real world. He emphasizes that even though “most of the time, scientists are driven by innovation,” this innovation requires a strong fundamental “purpose” that will help it gain an impactful result. The lab has several commercialized and licensed patents, and is currently working on creating new startups.
Sonkusale’s team focuses on building innovative solutions to address unmet needs for society. For these solutions, Sonkusale mentioned using challenging constraints that produce better results. For example, when building a diagnostic device that everybody can use, Sonkusale explained, the device should be low-cost and easy to develop. The lab uses accessible materials such as paper, threads and textiles for their innovations; when they process these materials, they use common methods such as conventional textile processing.
While Sonkusale emphasized that they prioritize using low-cost materials and procedures to produce low-cost innovations, they don’t disregard the overall effectiveness of the material. “But that does not mean we are compromising performance on the device, and that’s the engineering challenge,” Sonkusale said.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
Sonkusale Research Labs provides a collaborative environment for researchers working across various disciplines. This collaboration is quite challenging as everyone communicates and learns in their own way in this interdisciplinary research. “I’ve realized, in collaboration, being able to understand the other person’s language is extremely hard,” Sonkusale said. He overcomes this language barrier by patiently putting in the effort to understand the other person’s language and identifying the ‘keywords’ to get the conversation going. When working with doctors or clinicians, for example, the researchers try to identify their motivations and offer solutions that they can understand.
Failure as the path to success
Problem-solving is “90% failure, 10% success,” Sonkusale said. “People only hear the 10%.” While approaching a problem with different strategies, failures lead to different paths. Some of these paths are “very interesting,” Sonkusale said, as they add value and provide new insights for the problem that is trying to be tackled.
Instead of starting from scratch after a failure, the Sonkusale Research Lab team tried to build on top of previous infrastructure to reduce expenses. “If there is one guiding principle here [it is], ‘try to make sure that things already exist,’” Sonkusale said.
Smart bandages
A few years ago, Sonkusale Research Labs started a flexible bandage project that targets chronic wounds of diabetic patients. In comparison to the healthy human body — which can heal and close a wound itself — diabetic patient’s have diabetic neuropathy. Their wounds stay open, which often leads to infection and, in extreme cases, patients might need to amputate their wounded limbs.
Sonkusale and his team identified that the cause of the problem arose from not being able to monitor the healing of the wound, as the patients did not feel that their wounds were getting worse. As a result, they made one of the first devices that actually sensed a few biomarkers — indicators of a wound’s healing. From sensing the infections to delivering drugs to the wound in a closed-loop system, by using trial-and-error methods, the team built an accessible solution to a life-threatening issue.
Digestible pills
One of the more recent projects the team is working on is an ingestible pill that goes into a patient’s gastrointestinal tract and analyzes samples from the patient’s small intestine. From the microbiome samples, they can detect information about the person’s health and the disease that they have. The researchers hope to understand how small intestinal microbes are different for people with different diets, and from the data, create personalized information about a person’s health.
Sweat patches
For another project, the team used the tiny suction pump technology from a $20 blackhead remover to build their innovation. The body’s health data, as well as the microbiome, lies in the body’s fluids. As blood cannot be drawn regularly by patients, they sought an alternative solution to gather the body fluid to access this health data.
The research team came up with the idea of gathering the interstitial fluid (the wetness inside the skin) of the patient with blackhead remover suction pumps. These blackhead removers, equipped with tiny cameras, optimized the team’s innovation really effectively as they even worked as a microscope. This exemplified the team’s general ethos: using affordable, everyday products and materials to realize innovative ideas. “There is no microscope in the world that has a vacuum pump,” Sonkusale said. “Sometimes the problems are pre-solved," Sonusale said. “You just [need to] look elsewhere.”
As I wrapped up my interview with Sonkusale, he concluded that Tufts is a great place for students to do research. Sonkusale Research Labs and its innovations are collaborative projects between Sonkusale and the student researchers.
Sonkusale encouraged other students who are interested in Sonkusale Research Labs to reach out to him.
