Chenzhong Li - US grants

This award provides funds to the Florida International University to acquire a Nanoimprinter for research and education. Nanoimprinting is not governed by the optical diffraction limit and has the capability of large area exposures with high throughput. It will enable researchers at FIU?s open-access lab to conduct several main cutting edge research projects, such as: the development of micro-batteries based on carbon nanoelectrodes; integrated nano-photonic devices based on polymers; the mechanics of nanostructured polymer materials; DNA array biomedical devices; Micro/Nano fluidic devices; and carbon-nanotube sensors. The proposed activities will advance knowledge in and across different fields. By acquiring this next level of capability, FIU researchers and collaborators will be able to perform research on nanotechnology devices and processes that have great potential for actual applications.
The successful development of the proposed projects, enabled by the Nanoimprinter acquisition, has broad implications in health care and homeland security. This instrumentation research will integrate undergraduate and graduate student?s training. Existing hands-on laboratory courses will be expanded to include experiments with this new nanoscale mass-production technology. Together with the exciting research topics, the enhanced infrastructure for research at FIU - one of the top Hispanic Serving Institutions in Florida - will attract more students from our underrepresented population into graduate school. A big impact on increasing the number of students in materials science, biomedical and electrical engineering from traditionally underrepresented groups is expected. Exposing graduate and undergraduate students to this new technology in an open-access laboratory will also help to boost interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research collaboration across various research groups, blurring the boundary of departments and even institutions. The Nanoimprinter will be placed in the existing open-access Motorola Nanofabrication Research Facility, and will be easily accessible to campus users as well as other academic and industry users in south Florida.

0902139
McGoron

This project will support the 25th Southern Biomedical Engineering Conference (SBEC) to be held May 15-17, 2009 in Miami FL (hosted by Florida International University). The SBEC aims to assemble students, researchers, clinicians, and industry leaders in Biomedical Engineering to disseminate information in this rapidly growing field. The SBEC will provide a multidisciplinary, educational forum for discussing new ideas and future concepts in the field of Biomedical Engineering. The SBEC serves a special purpose of encouraging student participation by providing opportunities for students to present their research through a student paper competition. In keeping with the emphasis on student participation, the SBEC also plans to present student awards based on performances in both paper competitions and presentations. Additionally, this project will sponsor student registration fees and publication support. Due to the venue's location, the conference is expected to have higher Hispanic and Latino student participation. The conference will be of great educational benefit and will inspire junior researchers and students within the Biomedical Engineering field. This meeting will also promote the interaction among US and South and Central American scientists to impact the region and the nation.

Li
OISE-1036579
This project "US-Turkey Planning Visit: Collaborative Research in the Development of Biosensors for DNA Mutations Assay, July 2010" supports the travel of Dr. Chenzhong, Florida International University and three graduate students to Turkey to meet with Dr. Arzum E. Gursan at Ege University in Izmir and with Dr. Nilgun Batdogan at Istanbul Technical University to gain knowledge of nanomaterial preparation and impedance modeling and to develop a viable plan for a US-Turkey collaborative project to be submitted to NSF and to TUBITAK (NSF counterpart in Turkey). They also plan to visit Koc University in Istanbul to visit its micro-nanotechnologies research center.

Intellectual Merits: The merits of the planned research include an improved understanding of DNA mutant detection using a novel magnetic nanoparticle based electrochemical impedance DNA biosensor. This understanding includes detail of the design of the sensing chip, synthesis and functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles, training of electrochemical impedance technique and data modeling. Eventually this understanding will be applied to test the feasibility of developing chip based DNA biosensors. This collaboration will enable the research by sharing complementary expertise and research resources between the two groups and create a project that will address a critical challenge in the field of nanotechnology.

Broader Impacts: The visiting team consists of the PI and three graduate students with a spread of expertise and varying levels of experience working on the MEMS/NEMS fabrication and biomedical device testing. The project has the potential to create broader benefits to society with the possible commercialization of the DNA biosensor technology to expand the scope of these efforts beyond fundamental research. One graduate student will be primarily trained on the synthesis and functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles. The other graduate student will focus on the training of electrochemical impedance technique and the data modeling and the third will bring the experiences to the students in Dr. Gursan?s lab in a program specific for device design such as AUTOCAD. The preliminary results obtained will be used for the NSF- TUBITAK proposal. The young researchers will be exposed to state-of the-art facilities in an international setting. Additionally, web-based communication will be on-going after the international experience to foster a continuing relationship between the two group?s students. The project activities will advance new technology development while promoting teaching, training and learning and establishing strong ties between the U.S. and Turkey in biosensor research.

This project is co-funded by the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET) and the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recently, the PI's lab has successfully developed a whole cell based impedance system to monitor cellular behavior upon engineered nanomaterial exposure sensitive enough to measure the micro-motion of a cell and the progression of the cytotoxicity demonstrating the kinetic effects of the nanoparticles on the cells (://iopscience.iop.org/0957-4484/labtalk- article/43407?labTalkTab=mostRead). In another preliminary study, ROS induced cell DNA damage was amperometrically measured at a single cell level using a microelectrochemical sensor. The objective of this proposal is to develop a cell based biosensing system with the integration of the cell based impedance sensor, the DNA damage sensor and a novel 3D in vitro BBB model to measure nanotoxicity all in real-time. The oxidative DNA damage biomarker (8-OHdG) will be introduced to monitor the genotoxic kinetics following the time course of different types of nanomaterial exposure. Furthermore, upon integrating a novel 3D cell co-culture system, the transmembrane impedance of cultured blood brain barrier (BBB) models will be measured to understand the toxic effects of nanomaterials on the structure, composition and function of the tissues. The sensing system will be capable of real-time monitoring of the behavior of cells including genomic damage, cell attachment, motility, mortality and cytotoxicity, and BBB tissue transportation ability under various nanomaterial exposures with a simpler and less labor intensive operation and more precise results compared to conventional colorimetric methods which can only provide a general sense of cytotoxicity as they show results only at a final time point The toxicity of several engineered nanomaterials such as gold, silver, graphene, etc., will be kinetically assessed for a better understanding of the toxic mechanisms and the toxic effects of the nanomaterials due to the size, shape, and particularly the surface functional groups since particles may transport across cell membranes, especially into mitochondria, causing internal damage that may affect cell behavior over time . Advances in microfabrication technology will allow up to several hundred different individual culture wells containing the detecting electrodes to be fabricated on a single chip. In this context, the methodology becomes a truly powerful and throughput analytical device. This tool will help bridge scientific gaps and elucidate potential benefits and risks related to the use of nanoengineered materials. The project will develop and promote multi-disciplinary research and training experience for graduate students at FIU. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: We propose to develop an electrical sensing system in which the toxicity of various nanomaterials can be kinetically measured at the genomic, cellular and tissue level. This sensing system will be introduced as an indirect approach for kinetic screening of toxic properties of nanomaterials. The electrical impedance devices have important implications in solving problems in many biomedical areas such as nanotechnology based drug design and delivery, cancer diagnosis and therapy, and biomaterial development and applications.

The objective of this award is to develop and test a novel nanofluidic-nanoelectronic device with high specificity and sensitivity for biological sensing applications. To exploit the recently discovered nanofluidic advantages of carbon nanotube (CNT) nanochannel, nanofluidic devices based on high quality horizontally aligned single-walled CNT (SWCNT) arrays will first be fabricated. Then, the electrokinetic motion of analytes passing through the interior of CNT arrays will be characterized and controlled. Subsequently, practical approaches will be developed in these CNT nanofluidic devices to utilize several CNT based electrical sensing methods, including field effect transistor (FET), electrochemical sensing and capacitive charge sensing methods. Fundamental understandings of these sensing methods when they are incorporated into nanofluidic devices will be developed and different sensing methods will be combined together to achieve multimode sensing. Finally, the biosensor performance will be evaluated through the detection of secreted small molecules from individual living cells in real time.

If successful, this highly interdisciplinary research will develop new ways to integrate nanofluidics and nanoelectronics into one device. The knowledge and methods obtained from this project can be applied to other metallic or semiconducting nanotubes and nanopores. This project will lead to a new type of all-electrical biosensor, which will be ultrasensitive, highly selective, portable, cheap, requiring a low sample and power consumption. A new class of biosensor for single living cell sensing will be developed. The developed biosensor is also potentially applicable to a wide variety of areas: clinic diagnostics, environment protection and preservation, health improvement, national defense and bioterrorism prevention.

NRT-IGE: Nanomedicine Academy of Minority Serving Institutions

Nanomedicine is an emerging paradigm that seeks to develop engineered nanometer size particles to solve key problems in modern medicine, such as early diagnosis of disease and targeted delivery of therapeutics. This field is exciting to students and there is worldwide demand for training in this area. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) track to Northeastern University will translate cutting-edge advances in nanomedicine research into an education model to pilot and test a scalable, interactive network that empowers low-resource institutions to build capacity in nanomedicine training and develop degree programs in this emerging field. This project will create a reciprocal knowledge-sharing relationship among a large national pool of students across five institutions. The successful implementation of this new model of higher education is expected to broaden the participation of minorities in the nanomedicine workforce thus reducing disparities in the health workforce, establish new degree programs, and serve as a blueprint for the creation of similar education programs in other disciplines.

The goal of the project is to create a scalable network for knowledge delivery and scientific collaboration that is designed to enable student learning from expert instructors as well as from peers unrestricted by geographical location. The partners include five research universities with a tradition of providing higher education to underrepresented communities ? Northeastern University, University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Tuskegee University, Morgan State University, and Florida International University. The project will offer synchronous content through live, web-based videoconferencing protocols, allowing students to interact with instructors and peers at other universities in real-time. A parallel enterprise-level online learning environment will be created to enable team-based discussions and assignments. Courses to be offered include Introduction to Nanomedicine, Nanomedicine Research Techniques, Nano/Biomedical Commercialization, and a Nanomedicine Seminar Series. Faculty facilitators at each institution will coordinate the physical and online classroom environments, contribute to cross-institutional assignments, and provide supplementary instruction. Students will receive degree credit at their home institution through the establishment of course-equivalency at each partner institution. The implementation of these learning tools, together with the assessment of student learning, student demographics, and career development, is expected to generate sufficient new knowledge to enable expansion of this new and unique higher education model to a nationwide program.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative, and scalable models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education.

This work is supported, in part, by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.