AIR Option 2: Research Alliance Bio-enabled Nanosensors with Fully Programmable Ligand Detection

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This PFI: AIR Research Alliance project focuses on the translation and transfer of programmable, nano-enabled chemical sensor technologies to fill technology gaps in medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring. The technologies have the following market-valued features: programmable ligand sensitivity, miniature form factor, and compatibility with lab-on-a-chip technology, that provide exemplary sensitivity, selectivity, and overall performance when compared to the leading competing technologies in this market domain, for example ELISA tests and metal oxide gas sensors. The project accomplishes this transfer to the market by developing a set of platform technologies suitable for incorporation into commercial products across a broad set of applications, resulting in creation of new jobs in sensor systems design and manufacturing, commercial products for analysis of disease biomarkers and air/water quality, with the potential to license intellectual property generated by the project that will result in spinoffs. The partners engaged to transfer the technologies to the market domain include major industry (Intel, Lockheed Martin), start up ventures (Adamant Technologies, Graphene Frontiers), and a technology-based economic development program (Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania) with a network of angel investors. The partners will provide crucial insight into potential markets and application spaces, as well as access to critical technical capabilities and capital that will enable the new ventures that emerge to flourish. The potential economic impact is expected to be on the scale of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in the next five to ten years, which will contribute to the U.S. competitiveness in this global chemical sensors market. The societal impact in the short term will be the creation of technologies that will drive a transformation to a "smart society" where integrated chemical sensor systems are ubiquitous. The longer term impacts include a new generation of science and engineering students, educated in depth in their discipline but also with experience in the agile, dynamic thinking processes that are characteristic of innovative, entrepreneurial small businesses.