Booksh Research Group

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

University of Delaware

Newark, DE 19716

Phone: 302-831-2561                                        Fax: 302-831-6335

Lab: 302-831-2625                                            Email: kbooksh@udel.edu

 

 

Research Areas

Broadly speaking, we are working in four related applications biomedical process monitoring, environmental process monitoring, industrial process monitoring, and chemometrics.

Biomedical Process Monitoring

We have designed a fiber optic, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor capable of in-situ detection on ng/ml protein levels in biological fluids. The key to this research is the development of organic coatings for the sensors that enable antibody attachment while still being resistant to non-specific binding from off-target proteins. This sensor is being applied to protein biomarkers for heart attacks, strokes, and wound healing.

We are developing  nanoparticle embedded, molecular imprinted polymers (MIP) for detection of small molecules by SPR spectroscopy. MIPs increase the sensitivity and selectivity of the surface coatings while employing nanopartical further amplifies the change in the SPR signal. With nanoparticle embedded SPR sensors we can selectively detect 0.1 mg/ml sucrose in urine and <40 ppm ammonia in vapor and aqueous phase samples.

Calibration of glucose SPR-MIP sensor in water