Cameron Baradar Rose Hills
Designing and Implementing a Compact, Low Power Capacitively Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detector for Use in a Point of Care Diagnostic Device Coupled with a Microfluidic Chip
Quantitative portable medical diagnostics devices have the potential to transform medicine by providing a range of analytics that cannot be provided by classical binary readout assays. We are developing a next-generation portable clinical diagnostic device with low-power consumption that produces digitized data. To accomplish this we will utilize a detection method called, capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C4D), with microfluidic electrophoresis for detection in a low-power compact cheap plastic microchip. C4D directly detects ions using two external electrodes via capacitive coupling between the electrode and the solution in the microchannel. By passing a high frequency sinusoid through one electrode and picking up the signal with a second electrode, the conductivity of the solution between the electrodes is monitored and the presence of specific ions can be determined. This detection method will be optimized for detecting biomarkers associated with diseases critical to humanitarian efforts, such as HIV and malaria.
Message To Sponsor
During the school year I work in the same lab that I am now working in. And I absolutely love it. But I was afraid that I would not be able to continue doing research over the summer because my lab could not provide me with a summer stipend. I thus applied to a number of industry internships. After going through the interview process and being offered several positions, I heard about the SURF/Rose Hill Fellowship. I ecstatically applied. When I received admission into the program I immediately declined all my job offers. The SURF/Rose Hill Fellowship has allowed me to continue pursuing my passion.