Low-Cost Fluorescent Bacterial Counter
Project Description:
Bacterial infections and contamination is a serious problem worldwide. Methods to detect bacteria are currently expensive time exhaustive due to the fact that the current methods require culturing samples for 24 hours and costly PCR approaches needed to detect bacterial populations.
The goal of this project is to design a small portable and cost effective particle counting device that can measure ultra-low concentration bacteria (~atto molar) within minutes. Fluorescent Hit Counter will feature a faster process (~1 min/run/mL sample). The detectors are based on photon counts which will increase sensitivity. each sample will be safely sealed in each cuvette The current method is to grow bacterial cultures which required long-time incubation (~24 hours or more) and bacterial culture are counted by eyes which can lead to possible human errors. Another pitfall is that contamination may happen between the plates. Students will also think about how this design can also be used for wide range of applications including pollution monitoring, water/air quality control, etc.
Project Mentor:
Engineering Mentor: Engineering Mentor: Hongtao Chen, PhD, Senior Resaercher, Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics
Engineering Mentor: Michelle Digman, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering, UCI, mdigman@uci.edu
Physician Mentor: None
Other Resources:
Similar design: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0957-0233/24/6/065702/meta
Team Members:
Seyedeh Soha Foroughi, Freddy Ronaldo Menendez, Rachel Haeyoung Moon, Kevin Dion Morrison, Alma Jaimie Santiago