CIR Seminar - Professor Pedro Estrela

Professor Pedro Estrela
Director of Centre for Bioengineering & Biomedical Technologies (CBio)
Professor of Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering 
University of Bath, United Kingdom

Talk Title: Electrochemical Biosensors and Lab-on-Chip Devices for Medical Diagnosis and Water Monitoring

Abstract: There is a great need for low-cost intelligent biochips capable of massive parallel detection to be used in portable instrumentation. Electrochemical methods are inherently low-cost, miniaturisable and easily integrated into multiplexed systems for the parallel screening of panels of biomarkers. These can also be integrated with microfluidics and electronics to create fully functional Lab-on-Chip devices.
The combination of electrochemical sensing with synthetic bioreceptors molecules such as DNA aptamers and peptide aptamers, as alternatives to antibodies, is an attractive proposition towards more sustainable sensors for the detection of a range of biomarkers in medical diagnosis and for water/wastewater monitoring.

Bio: Pedro Estrela is Professor of Biosensors and Bioelectronics at the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Bioengineering & Biomedical Technologies (CBio) at the University of Bath. He has a background in Physics (degree and Masters from the University of Lisbon, PhD from the University of Amsterdam) and started working in the field of biosensors in 2000 (University of Cambridge until 2008 and University of Bath since 2008). He is Co-Director of the Research England funded Centre of Excellence in Water-Based Early-Warning Systems for Health Protection (CWBE), Co-Director of the NERC Centre for Doctoral Training in Real-Time Digital Water-Based Systems for Environmental Health Protection (Red-ALERT CDT), and member of the Steering Committee of the Consortium for Precision Health.
Prof. Estrela’s research focuses on the development of label-free electrical, electrochemical and plasmonic biosensors and lab-on-chip devices for a wide range of applications such as medical diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring as well as water/wastewater monitoring. He has over 175 peer-reviewed publications (h-index 53). He is an Associate Editor for the journals Biosensors & Bioelectronics, Sensors, Frontiers in Sensors and Advanced Devices & Instrumentation and Specialty Chief Editor in Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies.