Philip R. Troyk is Executive Director, Pritzker Institute of Biomedical Science and Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Affiliate Professor, Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Faculty Associate, Division of Biological Sciences – Department of Neurosurgery at The University of Chicago. He is founder, president, and CEO of Sigenics, Inc. Sigenics is the only private-label custom semiconductor company headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Chicago and Irwindale, CA. Academically, Troyk has a broad range of research interests related to neuroprosthetic devices which are implantable electronic modules that interface with the biological nervous system for the purpose of compensating for deficit, or disease, by mimicking normal sensory or motor function. Examples are neuromuscular stimulators for stimulating paralyzed muscles, implanted sensors for control of prosthetic limbs, neural interfaces for bioelectronics medicines, and brain interfaces. He is leader of a large multi-institutional team working to develop an intracortical visual prosthesis for individuals with blindness. His work is highly cross-disciplinary, and incorporates novel methods of design innovation and marketing-type decision processes. As CEO of Sigenics, he leads an engineering organization that supplies 250,000 custom electronic chips/year placed in modules that control on-board avionics for Boeing and Airbus planes, as well as develops chips that are in medical clinical trials for implantable neural interfaces devices. His interests include structured methods of design that focus heavily upon customer involvement, and highly-adaptable project management methodologies.

Awards & Recognitions

• 2021: Bartimaeus Award

Experience

• Professor (2013 - present)

  Biomedical Engineering

  Illinois Institute of Technology

• Director (2000 - present)

  Intracortical Visual Prosthesis (ICVP)

• Faculty Associate (2014 - 2019)

  Section of Neurosurgery

Education

• PhD, BioEngineering

  University of Illinois Chicago

• BS, Electrical & Electronics Engineering

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign