XLi-02
Innovative nanotechnology for Biomedical and Environmental applications
Health, human disease & diagnostics
Preferred major field of study or minimum required skills
You should have at least some basic knowledge either in chemistry, or biochemistry, or biology. Students will coauthor papers in our group. Check our web for more information http://li.utep.edu
Scholarly significance/intellectual merit
Over the past two decades, nanoscience and nanotechnology has been one of the most active research fields, resulting in significant impact on advances of analytical chemistry. For instance, gold nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, graphene, quantum dots, semiconductor nanowires, nanofluidics, and so on, have been widely used in numerous detection strategies.
The research in Dr. Li’s research group is centered on the development of innovative nanotechnology and microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for biomedical and environmental applications, with the emphasis on infectious disease and cancer diagnosis in low-resource settings. We for the first time developed nanoparticle-mediated photothermal immunosensing for quantitative biochemical analysis using a thermometer (Nanoscale 2016, 8, 5422-5427).
Research question(s)
- How to achieve quantitative biochemical analysis using a thermometer?
- How to improve detection sensitivity by using nanomaterials?
- How to simply immobilize nanosensors on a microfluidic biochip?
- How to achieve point-of-care biomarker detection?
Methods/techniques/instruments to be learned/utilized
This project focus on nanotechnology, one of the most hot research fields. You will learn how to use different instruments to characterize nanomaterials and nanosensors, and then apply the nanotechnology for biological or environmental sensing. Some instruments include UV/VIS microplate reader /spectrometers, electrochemistry analyzer, fluorescence microscopy, SEM, and so on.