Karawdeniya Nano-Sensing and Innovations Laboratory
About Us
Nano Innovations for Biomedical Excellence
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Our research program aims to design, fabricate, optimize, and couple micro and nanostructure-based sensing systems and enhance them with chemical approaches to detect health conditions and ensure pharmaceutical quality control at high resolution and selectivity, with more chemical information that could boost and pivot the biomedical field.
Single Molecule/Particle Level Sensing
for medical diagnostics and therapeutic quality assurance
Under this thrust, we develop solid-state nanopore (SSN) sensing protocols and technologies for single molecule and particle characterization and discrimination aimed at biomedical applications that could ultimately be extended to commercial portable technologies. Due to the tunable size of SSNs, this technology can be applied to a wide range of molecular classes. Our work spans planar nanopores and nanopipettes with a special interest in soft particles, e.g.: viruses and liposomes, characterization for biomedical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical quality control purposes. Furthermore, we envision coupling two or more other transduction methodologies (optical, electrochemical, chemiresistive) to create multimodal sensing that can probe more information about the biomarkers.
Fluid and Gas Surveillance
towards portable and wearable devices
This thrust aims to develop fluid and gas-sensing technologies for portable and wearable applications. We are especially interested in developing more sensitive and accurate eNose systems based on chemiresistive sensing technology using unexplored material and multivariant sensing. These developments are aimed at introducing non-invasive exhaled breath-based health diagnostics and monitoring. Many health conditions like cancer, Type I diabetes, liver, and kidney diseases lead to elevated levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath (sometimes in sweat as well). We are also focused on developing sensing technologies for detecting biomarkers in alternative sources for user-friendly and less invasive health monitoring.
Surface Engineered Systems
to manipulate surface properties for sensing, purification, and biomarker extraction
Pristine surfaces do not always display the desired properties for a given sensing application. Nevertheless, it is possible to modify the surface by chemical treatments, assembly of chemical functional layers, and deposition of physical textures to get beneficial functional moieties, textures, charge polarity, or charge density. This thrust explores a range of chemical and physical surface engineering routes to create tailored surfaces—both planar and porous—to develop sensors selective to target analytes, methodologies for purification and extraction of target analytes from complex samples, and anti-fouling capabilities for sensors that are beneficial to the other two thrusts. We are interested in developing sensors for promising novel biomarkers for non-invasive/ less-invasive sensing using surface engineered systems.
Our Biomedical Interest Areas
Includes but not limited to
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Cancer diagnosis
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Viral Infection diagnosis
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Quality control of gene therapy vehicles
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Diabetes monitoring
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Ocular and systemic conditions
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​Developing sensing technologies for novel biomarkers
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Non-invasive biomedical sensing
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