MSAL PhD Student Sydney Overton Named 2025-2026 Distinguished Dissertation Fellows

The Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering (ECE) recently named their 2025-2026 Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship awardees. The Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship is a departmental award recognizing outstanding students in the final stages of their dissertation work and seeks to provide both a financial award and recognition of the student's research excellence. 

Sydney Overton, Advised by Reza Ghodssi

Dissertation Title: An Ingestible Capsule for Gastrointestinal Serotonin Sensing to Investigate the Gut-Brain Axis

Overton’s research focuses on developing a fully-integrated system to investigate serotonin dynamics, enabling quantitative investigation of underlying mechanisms in the gut-brain axis (GBA). Specifically, she has developed an ingestible device for measuring serotonin in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, facilitating greater insights into how the brain and GI tract are interconnected. The research entails the design, fabrication, and characterization of an ingestible capsule, a small device designed to be swallowed, that repeatedly deploys sensors and performs electrochemical measurements to profile serotonin concentrations throughout the intestines. The work utilizes electrochemical sensing to detect serotonin in the GI tract, printed circuit board (PCB) electronics for onboard, wireless measurements, and leverages 3D printing to fabricate customized, miniaturized mechanisms and packaging for the ingestible device

More information can be found on the UMD ECE News (28 - May / 2026)