A Wearable Biosensor for Personalised Medicine

Project Description

Personalised medicine is heavily reliant on wearable biosensors. This project will develop wearable biosensors based on photonic structures (e.g. Bragg reflectors) fabricated on flexible substrates. The project will involve using self-assembled block copolymers and/or photofunctionalisable hydrogels to make the photonic structures [1, 2]. The analyte-selective receptors will be immobilised in photonic structures for selective sensing. The aim is to use smartphones to read the output of the photonic sensors for quantitative measurements. The developed biosensor will be a platform technology i.e. it can be adapted to facilitate personalised medicine for any disease condition.

The student will gain skills in polymers/hydrogels, microfabrication, microfluidics, optical sensors, bioanalytical methods, bioassay development, instrumentation and data analysis. The student will be based in Dr Ruchi Gupta’s group (https://rguptagrouplab.com/) in the School of Chemistry at University of Birmingham.

Funding Information

Self-funded students only.

Eligibility Requirements

Applicants should possess (or expect to possess) a good degree in physical sciences or engineering or allied disciplines.

Application Process

For informal enquiries please contact Dr Ruchi Gupta at [email protected]. Please include a CV and transcripts in your email.

References

[1] H.S. Lim, J.-H. Lee, J.J. Walish, E.L. Thomas, Dynamic Swelling of Tunable Full-Color Block Copolymer Photonic Gels via Counterion Exchang, ACS Nano, 2012, 8933. DOI: 10.1021/nn302949n.
[2] A.K. Pal, E. Labella, N.J. Goddard, R. Gupta, Photofunctionalizable Hydrogel for Fabricating Volume Optical Diffractive Sensors, Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics, 2019, 220, 1900228. DOI: 10.1002/macp.201900228.