Caltech Together: Silicon Valley

“Talking to Cells with Sound Waves for Medicine and Brain-Computer Interfaces” by Mikhail Shapiro, Professor of Chemical and Medical Engineering

Thursday, June 18, 2026
5:30–7:00 p.m.

To attend, please click this link to register for the event.

“Talking to Cells with Sound Waves for Medicine and Brain-Computer Interfaces”
by Mikhail Shapiro, Professor of Chemical and Medical Engineering

To understand how cells work, develop effective cell-based medicines, and build high-bandwidth interfaces with our bodies, we need tools to visualize and control cells inside our tissues. But how can we do this when tissues are opaque, and cells lack the “equipment” for wireless communication?

In our lab, we engineer cells to communicate via ultrasound—a form of energy that can access deep tissues while providing high resolution for imaging and control. To make cells responsive to ultrasound, we equip them with air-filled proteins that strongly scatter sound waves. These proteins, known as gas vesicles (GVs), evolved more than a billion years ago as flotation structures in aquatic cyanobacteria. By transplanting the genes that encode GVs from cyanobacteria into cancer cells, immune cells, neurons, and other cell types, we can use ultrasound to visualize and control these cells.

In this talk, I will share how we discovered this capability, how we’re applying it for biological research and medical applications, and how it has become the foundation for a major effort to develop molecular brain-computer interfaces (merge.io).

About the Speaker

Mikhail is the Max Delbrück Professor of Chemical Engineering and Medical Engineering, an HHMI Investigator, and Director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Medicine at Caltech.

Mikhail received his PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT and his BS in Neuroscience from Brown. He conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Miller Fellow.

Alongside academic research, Mikhail has been involved as a founder and adviser to several biotech startups, including Merge Labs, funded by OpenAI and others. More information about the Shapiro Lab can be found here.

To attend, please click this link to register for the event.

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