Jacob Eisbrenner has a vision to help others – through engineering and education

“If I can help someone do something they couldn’t otherwise, that’s extremely rewarding.”

Jacob Eisbrenner, a PhD student in electrical engineering, hopes to make that impact through his work in prosthetics and biomimetic design. “My passion lies in bridging the gap between engineering and biology to create innovative solutions that improve people’s lives,” he says.

Jacob has demonstrated this passion in both the research lab and classroom. Recently he was awarded Iowa State University Graduate College’s Teaching Excellence award for his instruction in EE 3330, Electronic Systems Design, and EE 4320/5320, Microelectronics Fabrication Techniques.

ECpE associate professor Meng Lu teaches the lecture of EE 4320/5320 alongside Jacob who TA’s the lab portion.

“I have witnessed firsthand Jacob’s remarkable ability to explain complex concepts in a clear and engaging way,” says Lu. “His receipt of the Teaching Excellence Award reflects both his dedication to mentoring students and his significant contributions to enhancing our laboratory environment.”

In the EE 4320/5320 teaching lab, Jacob leads engineering students through a 14-week fabrication process of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (MOSFET) devices in processes including oxidation, photolithography, doping, metallization and characterization.

“We are creating the devices (capacitors, diodes, transistors, etc.) in silicon that are used in logic circuits that control your computer chips, phone processors and smart watches,” says Jacob, “It’s teaching engineering students the basics of micro-fabrication, which is the techniques used to manufacture devices that are potentially thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.”

When he’s not teaching, you can find Jacob in the lab working on the early stages of a project called PRISM (Prosthetic retinal Implant via Spiking Microelectronic circuits), an effort aimed at creating a biomimetic prosthetic retina.

“The human retina performs complex preprocessing, edge detection, and mathematical operations before signals ever reach the brain, which has been no small task to replicate,” says Jacob.

He is using what he’s learned so far of semiconductors, opto-electronics and a generalized understanding of neuromodulation to create a biomimetic optical sensor. This means attempting to recreate the human retina using micro-electronic circuits. The challenge? Stability and circuit architecture.

“Jacob has impressed me with his creativity and perseverance in research. His work on biomimetic retinal prosthetics bridges cutting-edge semiconductor technology with biology, reflecting both innovation and vision,” says Lu.

The past two summers, Jacob has also worked as a graduate research and development electrical engineering intern at Sandia National Labs.