Awarded in 2021
Home Department: Electrical Engineering
Faculty Advisors: Shan Wang (Materials Science & Engineering, Electrical Engineering) and Paul (PJ) Utz (Medicine—Immunology & Rheumatology)

Research Title: Point-of-Care Giant MagnetoResistive Biosensors for Automated Nucleic Acid Amplification and Detection

Research Description: Nucleic acids are powerful biomarkers with broad diagnostic applications including the identification of disease-causing pathogens, gene expression analysis, and genotyping for mutational analysis. Despite their demonstrated value, many nucleic acid amplification technologies (NAATs) depend upon centralized laboratory facilities and trained technicians, hampering their ability to be widely deployed, particularly in limited resource settings. To address this unmet need, Ana Sofia is developing a point-of-care (POC) platform that will automatically perform both PCR amplification and endpoint analyte detection using Giant MagnetoResistive (GMR) biosensors in order to detect nucleic acid biomarkers with clinical laboratory precision.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Ana Sofia is a Bioinformatics Scientist at Tempus Labs, a company focused on bringing the power of data and artificial intelligence to healthcare.