Mission Statement

Our laboratory is dedicated to developing biosensor systems for early disease detection and targeted treatments.  Toward this end, one arm of our laboratory develops synthetic antibodies (called aptamers) that can perform useful molecular functions that conventional antibodies cannot do – such as conformational switching and signaling.  We generate these novel reagents through the process of “directed evolution” in the laboratory, and also optimize their functionality through molecular design. The second arm of our laboratory develops advanced electronic and optical hardware to fabricate the biosensors.  These biosensors are often designed to directly detect the pathogen itself.  However, we also design biosensors to measure the biomarker response of the host, which provides valuable information about the disease state.