Rapid and sensitive detection of stress hormones, such as cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), can benefit the diagnosis of diseases related to adrenal gland disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, and more. Stress hormones fluctuate in a circadian rhythm, the highest in the early morning and the lowest at night;...
Unlike other biosensing, electrochemical biosensor has the advantages of robustness, easy miniaturization, excellent detection limits, and capability in handling small analyte volumes. The detection selectivity of the electrochemical biosensors is mainly supported by bioreceptors. However, these receptors always suffer from the performance variation caused by the environment and the thermal-...
RNAs play important roles in the central dogma of molecular biology, and are involved in multiple biology processes such as chromatin modification, transcriptional interference and translation initiation. The functions of RNAs, especially non-coding RNAs, are highly related to its secondary structures, therefore computational methods for RNA structure prediction are of...
Silicon photonics has become the most promising platform for future large-scale optical interconnect and optical computing systems due to its inherent CMOS compatibility, which brings exclusive advantages in bandwidth density, energy efficiency, and cost effectiveness. Parallel optical interconnects based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have the capacity to meet the...
Metal grating based plasmonic filters are widely researched for their unique properties of field enhancement and localization of light beyond diffraction limit. However, the plasmonic grating filters reported in literature mostly have broadband outputs making them unsuitable for spectroscopy. In this project, we have designed, fabricated, and characterized an array...
Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) have gained much popularity in the search for alternatives to clean sources to harvest energy. Given their capability to harness an electric potential given a temperature differential across their opposing faces, and the foreseeable prevalence of naturally and/or commonly occurring temperature gradients in multiple applications, TEGs are...
Microfluidic devices have enabled lab-on-a-chip (LOC) systems that allow for complex sample analysis and preparation in a compact form factor. One technology that may benefit from a microfluidic approach and further miniaturization is flow cytometry. Flow cytometry is an analysis technique for enumerating and characterizing populations of cells; this is...
Recent advances in computing, communication, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have made our world more interconnected and data-rich than ever with the proliferation of smart devices and sensors. As a result, we are increasingly dependent on electronic devices and sensors to automate away life’s mundane parts. For example, in business...
In the past decades, femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS) has been gaining tremendous popularity in fundamental sciences stemming from chemistry to biology. It is capable of capturing both equilibrium and non-equilibrium structural information across a broad range of timescales with simultaneously high temporal and spectral resolutions. Femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy...
Learning to recognize objects is a fundamental and essential step in human perception and understanding of the world. Accordingly, research of object discovery across diverse modalities plays a pivotal role in the context of computer vision. This field not only contributes significantly to enhancing our understanding of visual information but...