About

Manuel Monge received the B.S. degree (with honors) in Electrical Engineering from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), Lima, Peru in 2008, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA in 2010 and 2017, respectively. He is the founder and CEO of OpenIC, a new organization focusing on Research & Develoment (R&D) of Integrated Circuits (ICs) and surrounding electronics using Open-Source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. Before starting OpenIC in 2024, he was a Lead Senior Circuit Design Engineer at Precision Neuroscience Corporation (2021-2023), an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC, 2018-2022), and an ASIC Design Engineer at Neuralink Corp. (2017-2018) .

Dr. Monge is the recipient of the 2017 Charles Wilts Prize from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Caltech for outstanding independent research in electrical engineering leading to a PhD, and the 2017 Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Prize in Biotechnology from the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech for the best thesis in the field of biotechnology. He is also the recipient of the 2020 NIBIB/NIH Trailblazer Award for New and Early Stage Investigators.

Research Interests

My research interests include integrated circuits (ICs) and microsystems for medical electronics, analog and mixed-signal ICs, fully wireless systems, implantable and wearable medical devices, sensing and actuation of biological media, localization of microdevices inside the body, in-body monitoring and control of biophysical processes, retinal prostheses, neural prostheses, and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). I am also interested in the design of ICs and surrounding electronics using Open-Source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools.

Expertise and Relevant Experience

My expertise includes: (a) development of analog, mixed-signal, radio-frequency (RF), and digital ICs and systems; (b) medical electronics; (c) neural interfaces and BCIs; (d) design of laboratories and infrastructure for ASIC development and prototyping.

Much of my prior work has involved the design, implementation, and validation of miniature, wireless devices for biomedical applications, including neurostimulators for retinal prosthesis, minimally invasive biosensors, and novel methods for microscale device localization in the body based on concepts from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). I have also developed advanced ASICs and microsystems for small, ultra-high-bandwidth, bidirectional BCIs.
As part of this work, I collaborated with applied physicists, biologists, neuroscientists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, software engineers, and physicians.

I have designed and built multiple laboratories for the development and prototyping of ASICs and microsystems for biomedical applications in Academia and Industry Startups. I have also built the infrastructure and computational resources needed for the design of Integrated Circuits using state-of-the-art EDA and CAD tools.