Question: What advice would you give to science students in Rhode Island -- not only URI students but to high school students who love science?
Answer: Always ask questions. Ask questions, especially when everybody seems to accept the way something is done. Don’t assume that everyone knows the reason why and that you’re the only one who doesn’t know. You might just be the first person to have ever thought about it, and that’s where discovery comes from. It might take many years of work and study to answer that first question, but along the way you will answer many other questions and have the opportunity to use science and engineering to help advance society. Learn as much as you can about as many subjects as you can, because you never know where you will find inspiration. Science, mathematics, computer programming, and shop or “maker” courses will give you sound technical skills. Learn how to write well. Knowledge of the humanities and the social sciences will help you guide your efforts toward outcomes that will benefit humanity.
Q: Can you tell us about the work that resulted in you winning an Innovation Award at the SciX Conference?
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A: I’ve been a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Rhode Island since 2009. When I started my position here, I also co-founded a nanotechnology company specializing in nanofluidics. For five years I directed the research and development effort as well as corporate partnerships, and a vital part of my focus was ensuring that the devices worked reliably and at a high performance level. This application focus also infuses my academic work in that my research group and I strive to make fundamental discoveries and carry them all the way to users who can then rely on them to make their own discoveries or to support their own applications. We faced a problem in the nanopore science world…
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Q: Hold on, what is a nanopore?
A: A nanopore is a special tool used for sensing chemicals down to the level of a single molecule. It’s a nanofluidic device that can be thought of as a “straw” that is one millionth the diameter of a typical straw and one 10-millionth the length. As we pass single molecules through this nanopore, we can sense and characterize them one at a time. One of the challenges of sensing is something called the “limit of detection.” People may hear terms such as “parts per million” when referring to chemical concentrations. The ultimate in chemical sensitivity is to sense a single molecule (there’s no sensing of half a molecule), and this is the type of capability that nanopore science gives.
Q: So what was the challenge with nanopores?
A: We faced a problem that it was exceedingly difficult to control the surface coatings of nanopores, often with dire consequences such as clogged pores or failure to detect anything at all. We decided to tackle this problem because we needed much better performance to carry out our glycomics work (study of carbohydrates with medical and biological importance). We very quickly saw that the discovery was a breakthrough in giving us the desired ability to tune performance under every circumstance and for every application we tried.
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Q: What made your discovery a breakthrough?
A: There’s a pretty exciting array of medical diagnostic and chemical analysis companies trying to commercialize nanopore technology. There are companies focused on personalized medicine, clinical diagnostics, and agriculture. One limitation that all face is that it has been very difficult to reliably control nanopore surface coatings, leading to device failure. We focus on both performance and reliability in my lab, and this technological advance seems to excel on those fronts while being easy to implement. Students who have graduated from my group have been in demand by these companies because of the expertise developed while working on this discovery.
Q: What are some of the medical benefits of your breakthrough? And how could this innovation save money?
A: We think that our technology will help to make medical diagnosis faster, cheaper, and more reliable. It will help to improve quality assurance in the pharmaceutical industry by detecting impurities at the level of a single molecule. And that it provides unique capabilities for scientists to use to make discoveries that might then subsequently be used to improve medical diagnosis and treatment. Our core nanopore technology is in principle incredibly simple. So it has the potential to be used routinely in the doctor’s office, or to provide simple at-home medical diagnostic capabilities at low cost. With reliable and routine diagnostics available at low cost, one can conceive of diagnosing diseases at earlier stages than using conventional approaches.
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Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FitzProv.
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December 23, 2019 at 06:01PM
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