Advancement to Candidacy: Alexandra Stambaugh, PhD Student, Electrical Engineering
Wednesday, June 6, 2018 – 1:30pm, Engineering 2, Room 280
Host – Professor Holger Schmidt
Abstract: Efficient “Lab-on-a-Chip” devices can rapidly analyze small volumes of clinically relevant chemical or biological samples, which make them ideal candidates for portable “Point-of-Care” diagnostic tools. There have been a number of well-fabricated devices which employ integrated photonic principles for biosensing, bioanalysis, and other applications. This union of optics and microfluidics is referred to as Optofluidics. Our lab has constructed a biophotonic analysis platform based on Anti-resonant Reflecting Optical Waveguides (ARROWs) which are waveguides designed to propagate light through a low-refractive index core. These devices are comprised of orthogonally intersecting liquid-core and solid-core light carrying ARROWs for planar fluorescence excitation and detection of single biomolecules in flow.
My work is centered on designing diagnostic assays for multiple types of biomolecules in flow, such as whole influenza viruses, total RNA from viral hemorrhagic fevers, and dual protein-nucleic acid detection from the Zika virus. I will also be presenting progress on bright molecular probes made to specifically detect single antigens on our optofluidic platform and future work that involves detecting exosomes on chip.