Aleksandr Simonian
$549,973
University of Florida
Florida
Engineering (ENG)
Continuous monitoring of biological and chemical markers within the human body represents a significant advancement in medical technology, offering comprehensive insights into an individual’s health status. The development of such monitoring capabilities is crucial for medical professionals managing patients with compromised immune systems—a condition responsible for a substantial number of fatalities in U.S. hospitals annually and one of the costliest to diagnose and manage. The ability to access patient immune status rapidly and frequently poses a challenge for doctors seeking to make informed clinical decisions, a reality underscored by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The research project aims to develop a novel bio-monitoring technology that enables clinicians to directly assess the immune functions of patients at point of care. This will be accomplished by integrating nanomaterials and biomolecules into a novel diagnostic device. Beyond its medical applications, this biosensing technology has potential utility in environmental monitoring, water quality assessment, and the oversight of pharmaceutical production. Additionally, this project will explore the application of bio-monitoring technology to investigate the emotional responses during learning in students from diverse educational backgrounds. In the education study, the project will produce new learning resources, broaden research opportunities for students, and offer tailored research training programs to high school and college students in the STEM education pipeline. <br/><br/>Understanding the rules of human immunology requires continuous access to immune system status, which can provide dynamic insights about immune functions in health and disease. Critical gaps exist in our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms that drive immune dysfunction, and we lack tools that can continuously monitor immune responses. There is a critical need for novel biosensing technologies that enable continuous immunologic monitoring, timely disease trajectory prediction, and tailored medical intervention. The overall goal of this project is to develop a novel Photothermal Recycling (PTR) biosensing technology that meets the bioanalytical needs of frequent, in-line immunomodulator monitoring. A major technical challenge in biochemical monitoring is achieving fast sensor response while maintaining high sensitivity and specificity. This project plans to overcome this challenge by leveraging photothermal properties of nanomaterials to rapidly recycle binding reagents. The approach encompasses three objectives. First, an ultra-sensitive PTR assay mechanism and characterize assay performance will be demonstrated. Second, a high-throughput screening pipeline for assay generalization will be developed. Third, a prototype device for automated in-line immunomodulator analysis will be developed. The research is innovative and significant because it gives researchers a new tool to access time-resolved physiological data, which is an important resource for advancing our knowledge in understanding the rules of life. Building on the nanosensor research, the education activities will investigate the interrelation of students’ test anxiety and learning outcomes using time-resolved physiological data enabled by multimodal biosensing.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.