Sponsors / Funding Agencies

Areas and Topics

We have been working on a wide range of biosensing platforms, including optical, piezoelectric, and electrochemical sensors. Our main focus is to develop lab-on-a-chip, portable, wearable, and implantable sensors utilized in medical diagnostics, food safety and quality, as well as environmental monitoring. We combine our sensor devices with synthetic and natural receptors and smart inorganic nanomaterials to improve detection performance. While doing so, we continuously look for suitable surface chemistry development approaches for efficiently conjugating the recognition elements on the sensing surfaces and capturing the target molecules, including protein and genetic biomarkers, macro/micro-nutrients, microorganisms and their metabolites (i.e., primary and secondary), toxins, pharmaceuticals, and soil nutrients.

Our group has been working with bioinspired materials and applying them for biosensing, imaging, therapy development, selective filtration and separation, and intelligent packaging systems. We often design these materials by employing targeted molecular interactions, molecular dynamics calculations, and computational simulations. We use various synthesis methods for their production, such as solid-phase, electropolymerization, core-shell, etc. We employ microscopic, spectroscopic, and electrochemical techniques to determine their functional, physicochemical, structural, and biological properties prior to their use in intended applications.

One of the critical studying aspects in our group is the extraction and purification of bioactive compounds and biomacromolecules from value-added agri-food waste products using innovative thermal and non-thermal processing technologies. The obtained healthy-functional extracts by mixing into biopolymeric structures are micro/nano-encapsulated using a wide spectrum of smart encapsulation techniques. Physicochemical, bio- and techno-functional, rheological, structural, and in vitro and in vivo controlled-release factors are scrutinized using advanced analytical systems such as HPLC, LC-MS, and sensors. These bioactive-loaded particles as intelligent delivery agents are incorporated into food matrixes to produce functional foods with favorable health-promoting effects.