Opportunity: Molecular Tools for Biosensing

The group’s research focuses on engineering molecular tools to create systems that sense Airmen’s and Guardians’ (A/G’s) biosignatures, which we define as the combination of biomarkers related to a specific condition like stress or cognitive function, and provide information to assess and improve A/G‘s mental and physical performance.

The main technical research areas that interns joining the group can participate on are:

1) In silico/in vitro selection of biorecognition elements (BREs) responsive to biomarkers of interest,

2) Integration of BREs in different sensing platforms including nano-, electrochemical- and biological, 3) Selection and design of regulatory elements (REs) to control gene expression in different organisms in response to specific biomarkers,

4) Integration of REs in biological circuits to engineer bacteria and their cell-free transcription/translation systems to design sensing platforms with complex data analysis/decision-making capabilities (sense/assess/respond),

5) development of matrices to deploy biological sensors in- and on-the body. Student interns will perform lab experiments in the “wet” labs or using computational tools to aid sensor design.