Programmable Matter: Liquid Metal for Reconfigurable Electronics and Logic
Liquid metal (LM) represents a unique class of programmable matter that combines electrical conductivity with dynamic deformability, enabling the development of reconfigurable electronics and embodied computation. This seminar will discuss electric field-driven control of LM shape and position to achieve tunable, directional LM droplet motion.
Overview
This enables a reconfigurable circuit platform in which LM serves as a dynamic interconnect for sequential activation, parallel switching, and self-healing of broken pathways. The platform supports programmable functions, including on-demand valves, droplet sorting, feedback sensing, and fluidic logic operations. Additionally, the seminar will discuss progress in liquid metal-based logic architectures where controlled droplet transfer between elastomeric chambers serves as a mechanism for information encoding, logic operations, and modular computation. This physically embodied approach to logic, in which information, material state, and actuation are intrinsically coupled, holds potential applications in soft robotics and mechanical computing. The materially embedded approach links information processing to device mechanics, reduces reliance on rigid control hardware, and positions LM as both a deformable conductor and a programmable medium for physically grounded computation in adaptive soft devices.
Presenters
Wedyan Babatain, Ibn Rushd Postdoctoral Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab
Brief Biography
Dr. Wedyan Babatain is currently an Ibn Rushd postdoctoral scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab . She has an interdisciplinary background obtaining a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering with a minor in bio-Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware, USA, in 2017, and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), KSA, in 2019. Her research focused on developing a wearable closed-loop feedback transdermal drug delivery platform. In 2022, Dr.Babatain received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from KAUST where she focused on developing liquid metal-based inertial sensors for motion monitoring and human machine interfaces. Her research topics of interest include sensors, actuators, microfluidics, flexible and soft electronics and robotics. She received the King Abdullah Scholarship Program (KASP) awarded by the Ministry of Education to complete her undergraduate studies in the US, the KAUST Graduate Fellowship for her graduate studies and the Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Rushd Fellowship for her postdoctoral research at MIT. Dr. Babatain has also been selected among the 2022 UT Austin EECS Rising Stars , the Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review Arabia and Forbes 30 under 30 list for the Middle East. She was a finalist at the 2022 SXSW Innovation Awards and has presented her research projects prototypes at CES, SXSW, and IDTechEx. She is a member of the IEEE, BME society, and the secretary of the Electron Devices society chapter of western Saudi Arabia.