{"id":60395,"date":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-chemist-awarded-prestigious-early-career-grant-for-research-on-molecular-sensing-for-biomedical-diagnostics\/"},"modified":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","slug":"uri-chemist-awarded-prestigious-early-career-grant-for-research-on-molecular-sensing-for-biomedical-diagnostics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/09\/uri-chemist-awarded-prestigious-early-career-grant-for-research-on-molecular-sensing-for-biomedical-diagnostics\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 chemist awarded prestigious \u2018early career\u2019 grant for research on molecular sensing for biomedical diagnostics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 September 26, 2012 \u2013 A chemistry professor at the 溏心vlog免费B站 has been awarded a $400,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation through its Faculty Early Career Development program, the most prestigious NSF grant program supporting junior faculty members. The five-year grant will enable Assistant Professor Jason Dwyer to combine elements of chemistry and engineering to develop new methods for diagnosing medical conditions using hand-held technologies.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe focus of my research is to build next-generation devices that are cheap, reliable and easy-to-use so that they can be used equally well for routine medical diagnostics in the clinic, at home, and in more challenging environments such as a roadside accident or a makeshift clinic in a disaster zone,\u201d explained Dwyer, a resident of Providence.<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to Dwyer, the key to inventing such a device is to develop a chemical sensor that can detect low levels of molecules in the blood that are indicators of disease.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe will follow two main design principles in this work. We want to sense individual molecules, so we\u2019ll build molecular-scale tools — in this case, nanofabricated holes that can fit only a single molecule at a time,\u201d said Dwyer. \u201cAnd we want to let special molecular recognition agents, such as antibodies, do the work of identifying the molecules present in a sample.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tDwyer calls this research technique \u201ccatch-and-release fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe molecule I\u2019m looking for is floating in the blood stream, so I\u2019m going to dangle my molecular recognition agent \u2013 that\u2019s the worm on my hook \u2013 and let it do the work of catching the one that I want,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter a period of time, I pull up my hook, and I can tell what I\u2019ve caught by how hard it holds onto the molecule that I\u2019ve caught.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt can lead to personalized medicine if we search for clinically relevant DNA sequences,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the test is reliable and cheap, we can also imagine routinely monitoring a patient\u2019s health at the molecular level.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe next challenge will be to turn the molecular sensor into an easy-to-use, hand-held device.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cYou can build a $500 million machine that can reveal details about how molecules interact with each other,\u201d Dwyer said. \u201cBut that\u2019s like trying to look at something as small as a molecule with a machine the size of a football stadium. We\u2019re after really small things, so we want our tools to be small, too. And then we have to package it like an iPod so users can push buttons to get useful information.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAn important element of the National Science Foundation\u2019s Faculty Early Career Development grants is to link research with teaching and outreach. So Dwyer will involve many of his students in the project and teach them how to share their enthusiasm for chemistry and engineering with the general public.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cNew technologies need champions, and there\u2019s nobody better to be a champion than the student researchers who developed it,\u201d he said. \u201cMy students will not only be able to design better biomedical diagnostics, but they\u2019ll be able to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nDwyer will provide his students with media training, work with them to produce short feature stories for the 溏心vlog免费B站 radio station, and offer them opportunities to develop science activities with high school students at TIMES2 Academy in Providence.<\/p>\n


\n\tIn 2011, Dwyer discussed his research at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Honors Colloquium. The lecture can be viewed in its entirety at www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mSw8JDlO2Xg.<\/p>\n


\nDepartment of Communications & Marketing photo by Joe Giblin<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 September 26, 2012 \u2013 A chemistry professor at the 溏心vlog免费B站 has been awarded a $400,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation through its Faculty Early Career Development program, the most prestigious NSF grant program supporting junior faculty members. The five-year grant will enable Assistant Professor Jason Dwyer to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}