Fisk University Awards
- Project Name: Multifunctional Materials for Air and Liquid Protection
Awarding Agency: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy
Project Summary:
This research is designed to create a new type of dynamic, biofunctionalized nanomaterial to provide real time detection of specific biological and chemical agents through the fusion of multiple, colocated sensing modalities. The project will stratify potential targets in the sensing environments by size, using fine control over multiple properties of a piezoelectric fiber to create filters of controlled and well defined pore sizes ranging from microns to tens of nanometers.
Outcome:
Produced high quality piezoelectric nanofibers, and characterize piezoelectric, electrical and photoelectric properties of pristine and functionalized nanofibers for biological and chemical sensing, and developed an experimental strategy for nanofiber array production. - Project Name: Modeling organophosphate toxicity in C. elegans through a scalable and in silico approach
Awarding Agency: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy
Project Summary:
The research will test the effects of different organophosphates (OPs) on the model organism C. elegans using multiple behavioral and molecular assays, and refine a workflow that prioritizes assays that are more sensitive to the effects of these known organophosphates. The project will collect data from these assays and develop mathematical and computational models and combine these with models we generate from data in the literature and address two (2) objectives: 1. Testing assays & modeling data from known organophosphate chemicals and 2. Design multi-channel microfluidics device w/ multi-imaging modalities.
Outcome:
Developed the systematic workflow of assaying relevant phenotypes for OP toxicity, complete phenotypic datasets from 5-10 and the prototype microfluidics (worms-on-a-chip) device, and develop the basic project mathematical and computational models.
