Biomedical/Environmental/Process Instrumentation and Diagnostics: One of my primary interests has been to develop low cost portable blood diagnostics in 3rd world areas. I am also interested in the development of extreme throughput and high information content cellular/particle analysis systems. Finally, high volume monitoring approaches for environmental and process monitoring are also of interest. In all of these areas we are studying the basic science of how particles are positioned for analysis, how analog signals are processed for maximum information content, and the development optimum detection systems. We have active research in: A. acoustic, optical, and dielectrophoretic particle manipulation. B. Signal processing. C. Optical detector development. Finally, my group emphasizes the development of real devices that can be quickly translated into real world use.
Biomolecular Engineering for Protease Studies, Screening, and Molecular Computation
I am interested the development of biomimetic in vitro and in vivo molecular assemblies for the study of key enzymatic processes. Currently my focus is on proteases where my group is developing surface based molecular assemblies to study the mechanisms of key toxin and viral proteases and the use of these assays in high throughput screening. Of interest to my group are the underlying effects of diffusion, binding, and surface structure on a variety of enzymatic reactions. We are studying these effects with regards to proteases, which commonly exert their effect at surfaces, and will be expanding this to deoxyribozymes. For proteases, it is important to explore the basis for mechanistic differences seen at surfaces and in solution, as this will have implications for both general understanding and on optimal approaches for the discovery of protease active compounds via high throughput screening. With regards to deoxyribozymes, we are developing molecular computation systems for real world use in diagnostics, pathogen detection, and theranostics.
