Resume

Striving for the development, fabrication, and application of smart biomaterials to realize high-precision analysis in microfluidic systems, my specific focus is on the design and development of microfluidic devices for advancing biomaterial research and discovery in regenerative medicine.

• Electro/biochemical sensing platforms for the detection of early biomarkers of cancer. Combining microfabrication and analytical chemistry approaches for electrophoretic separations of proteins wass the main focus of this project.
• Colorimetric sensors for detection of Li+ in whole blood. The goal of this project was to develop a microfluidic sensing system to capture target molecules are produced as a result of metabolized medicines in the body.

• Free-floating “protein barcode” microgels for single-cell western blotting assays to increase the readout throughput as well as multiplexing capacity of the conventional single-cell western blotting platforms.
• A robust tool which enables protein isoform screening on a patient-to-patient basis to tailor breast cancer treatment. The tool electrophoretically resolves proteins (extracted from a 2D tissue section) along the depth (z-axis) of a supporting photoactive hydrogel layer and creates a novel 3D protein ‘imprint’ of the tissue section for stable storage and downstream antibody probing. This project to maximizes the quality and utility of biospecimens for downstream analyses for both cancer diagnostics/prognostics and personalized medicine.
• Releasable hydrogels for enabling separation of cellular proteins with down to 2 kDa size differences.  Altering the chemistry of the hydrogel backbone, we can separate proteins from single-cells in dense gels, which do not allow for target labelling, and introduce the label molecules after decrosslinking the hydrogel matrix that has larger pore size to allow for the transport of large labelling molecules.

• Exploring the physics behind the ion concentration polarization phenomena in charged hydrogels by surface chemistry alterations, and computational research on ion concentration polarization.
• Enhancing CO₂ sequestration performance of individual algae cells, Cocolithophores, in a microfluidic platform.

• Diagnostic lab-on-a-chip device for preparative DNA fractionation in continuous flow. This project enables purification and fractionation of DNA molecules. The simple technology for fabricating hydrogel sieving matrix offers great promise for addressing second-generation sequencing challenges, including low-cost and high-resolution purification and fractionation of DNA sizes of interest.
• Organ-on-a-chip device to build in-vitro cell culture platforms for tissue mimicry. This device allows for studying the interactions of gut bacteria and gut epithelial cells, and their response to drug treatment in a compartmentalized cell culture, which holds a great promise both for building organotypic in-vitro platforms and for addressing drug screening and toxicology testing challenges.
• Desalination-on-chip device for performing high-throughput processing of salty water using ion-selective hydrogels. The microchip allows to study the interplay of ion transport phenomena at the electrolyte-hydrogel interface during the desalination process. This project is a first step towards the low-cost and versatile platforms for microfluidic ion-separations.

• Aerobic biodegradation of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene by bacteria strains. In this project, firstly, I developed a novel HPLC technique to detect low concentrations of explosives including TNT, ADNTs and DNTs. Secondly, I isolated TNT-degrading bacteria strains to degrade TNT in aqueous solutions.
• In-vessel composting approach for removal of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) from soil. The compost mixture was amended with TNT-degrading bacteria strains to decrease the composting period and increase the TNT removal.

• DNA extraction and isolation from patients’ blood samples for Molecular Genetics of Bietti’s Crystalline Dystrophy project.