PhD Proposal: Aaron Thole

Aaron Thole, PhD Student

Location: The Commons 329 & WEBEX

Advisor: 

Dr. Govind Rao

Title: 

Recent events have shown the devastating impact of pandemics. One valuable piece of technology that is unavailable is an affordable device that can continuously detect the presence of emerging viruses in air condensate. Our goal is to develop a system that detects viruses by sandwiching the virus between two lectins, proteins that bind to carbohydrates. Griffithsin is a lectin with the ability to bind very strongly to unique glycans found on the surface of many different infectious viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 and various strains of influenza A. The system incorporates a microfluidic chip containing non-porous beads with immobilized griffithsin. If a sample passing through the system contains viruses, they will bind to the griffithsin on the bead surface, and fluorophore-labeled griffithsin periodically passed through the system will be immobilized by the bound virus and be easily recognized by a photodetector. Based on the change in the baseline of the signal, one can determine if virus is present. The project will also incorporate supervised machine learning algorithms in order to minimize false positives and negatives.

Agenda

• 1:45 pm: Meeting room will open
• 2:00 pm: 45-min presentation will be open to the public with Q&A.
• Followed by a closed session with the committee and PhD Student.