Headshot portrait of Daniel Bechstein - Bio-X Bowes Fellow
Bio-X Graduate Student Fellow

Awarded in 2012
Home Department: Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Advisors: Shan Wang (Materials Science & Engineering, Electrical Engineering) and Juan Santiago (Mechanical Engineering)

Research Title: Microfluidic protein bioassays using Giant Magnetoresistive sensors

Research Description: 2.5 million vaccine-preventable childhood deaths occur annually. While these vaccines are very affordable, ensuring a full immunization is a bottleneck in vaccination programs. Daniel is developing a novel point-of-care diagnostic device combining advantages of microfluidic sample processing, biomarker-based immunoassays, and integrated circuit-based magnetic sensing to test the immunization status. Magnetic sensor technology, originally developed for computer hard drive read heads, is used to quantify analyte concentrations in biological samples. This allows multiple orders of magnitude lower limits of detection than the current gold standard technology. The point-of-care platform can be expanded to detect cancer and other diseases.

WHERE IS HE NOW?

Daniel is a Sensor Architect at Apple, Inc.