Prof. Ertan Salik receives biotechnology grant to develop sensitive fiber optic biosensor

Prof. Ertan Salik received the Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Grant for his project titled "Ultrasensitive and Robust Fiber Optic Biosensor for Rapid Immunoassays" from the California State University Program on Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB). Dr. Salik collaborates in fiber optic biosensor development projects with Dr. Shelton Murinda (Animal and Veterinary Science) and Dr. Wei-Jen Lin (Biological Sciences).

This grant provides $15,000 funding over the next year to develop the fiber optic biosensor. Dr. Salik gives the summary of the project as:

"Biosensors have great potential to address numerous needs in medical diagnosis, food safety, environmental monitoring, and biodefense. Widespread availability of sensitive, cost-effective, and portable biosensing platforms will lead to significantly faster and cheaper detection in the laboratory, at home, and in the field. This project aims to develop a cost-effective and robust fiber optic biosensor that can detect low concentrations of proteins, toxins, or bacteria in liquid samples in less than 1 hour. Such sensitive detection can enable early diagnosis of some diseases, and improve food safety through detection of infectious bacteria, such as E. coli O157:H7, which is a public health threat, and one of the five big foodborne pathogens that cost ~$6.9 billion/year to our economy."