Ashwin Rao joined the Creager Group in 2002 and is working towards his Ph.D. in Chemistry. He completed his M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry from Wilson College, Mumbai, India in 2000 before joining Clemson University. His research work focuses on Electrochemical Biosensors

Research

Our research group focuses on fabrication and development of capture or sandwich based biosensors for ultra low detection DNA and small proteins.

Biosensor, in principle, is a device incorporating a biological sensing agent either intimately connected to or integrated to a transducer whose function is to relay a signal for the interaction between the surface and the analyte either directly or through a chemical mediator. For clinical analysis, biosensors have great applicability especially in the areas of drug screening and monitoring purposes. They have the potential to revolutionize analytical methodology by providing a powerful, portable and often less expensive alternative to older and well-established laboratory techniques. In particular, monitoring therapeutic drug levels, medical diagnosis, and in-the-field biological warfare detection will benefit from development of biosensors.

Two approaches for such a system have been thought of, for the current research. One involving fabricating a sensor using an electrode made from macroporous reticulated vitreous carbon (RVC), where the biosensing materials (viz. enzymes, oligonucleotides, etc.) are incorporated inside these RVC electrode followed by electrochemical detection of the analytes as shown in the figure. Another project involves designing a bead or membrane based biosensor where biosensing materials are immobilized onto beads or thin membranes followed by detection inside a small volume electrochemical cells fabricated in the lab.