Vision and Approach
A central goal of my research is to help drive a new generation of medical technologies that move beyond the one‑size‑fits‑all paradigm of diagnosis and therapy. I am motivated by the need for personalized and precision medical tools that are not only scientifically rigorous, but also scalable, affordable, and deployable in resource‑limited and remote settings. I view global health not as a separate application domain, but as a design constraint that leads to more robust, impactful, and widely usable technologies.
My long‑term vision is to enable faster, more precise diagnostics that directly inform targeted clinical decision‑making across infectious disease, cancer, and immune‑mediated conditions. Rapid identification of the specific pathogen responsible for an infection, for example, would reduce reliance on broad‑spectrum antibiotics and improve antimicrobial stewardship. In parallel, I aim to establish a new class of generalizable microfluidic platforms for rare‑cell analysis, motivated by the critical limitations of existing technologies for circulating tumor cell (CTC) isolation, molecular profiling, and therapeutic assessment. By enabling sensitive, scalable, and functionally informative analysis of rare cells directly from complex samples, these platforms have the potential to support earlier cancer detection, improved disease monitoring, and more personalized treatment strategies.
A recurring theme in my work is early detection-making disease, or even disease risk, measurable at stages when intervention is more effective or prevention is still possible. I am also committed to developing diagnostic systems that can be rapidly adapted to emerging pathogens or evolving biological threats, ensuring readiness in both clinical and global health contexts.
To realize these goals, my research focuses on the development of point‑of‑care diagnostic devices and microfluidic lab‑on‑a‑chip platforms for the detection, identification, and quantification of biomarkers, pathogens, and rare cells. Our group develops biosensor technologies that integrate selective biological recognition elements with electrical or optical transducers for sensitive and rapid signal readout. These systems are designed to operate directly on complex samples, such as whole blood, while minimizing user intervention and infrastructure requirements.
The success of these technologies depends on thoughtful integration across disciplines. My work brings together electronics, micro‑ and nanofabrication, surface chemistry, optics, and data analysis to create diagnostic platforms that meet stringent application‑driven requirements, including sensitivity, speed, reproducibility, portability, automation, multiplexing capability, and cost‑effectiveness. Equally important is versatility: robust microfluidic and biosensor platforms must support modular and interchangeable assay components, enabling rapid reconfiguration for new biological targets.
By addressing these challenges, my research aims to accelerate the translation of microfluidic and biosensor technologies from the laboratory to real‑world clinical, cancer, and global health applications-ultimately enabling more informed, timely, and equitable healthcare decisions.
Current Research Thrusts
Microfluidic and Lab‑on‑a‑Chip Diagnostics
Integrated microfluidic platforms that combine sample processing, amplification, and detection into compact, automated systems for point‑of‑care use.
Rapid Infectious Disease Detection and Sepsis Diagnostics
Non‑culture‑based technologies for ultra‑sensitive detection and classification of bacterial and viral pathogens directly from whole blood.
Immune Response Monitoring
Biosensor and microfluidic systems for detecting inflammation‑associated biomarkers and profiling host immune responses to enable disease stratification and personalized treatment strategies.
Unbiased Single‑Cell Analysis
Integrated microfluidic technologies that unify circulating tumor cell isolation, sustained single‑cell culture, and multimodal molecular and functional analysis, establishing broadly applicable design principles for next‑generation microfluidic platforms that enable single‑cell drug response profiling from liquid biopsies.
