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Global Health Initiative

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The Global Health Initiative is a collaborative effort to develop novel solutions to complex global health problems. Our efforts combine various fields (biology, engineering) to develop a robust, reliable and inexpensive microfluidic chip that is capable of monitoring HIV from a fingerprick sample of whole blood, and E.coli in the food supply, and affordable in resource-limited settings.

Rapid HIV Detection

More than 35 million HIV-infected people live in the developing world, where resources are scarce. We have been developing low-cost diagnostic devices for global health problems, such as counting CD4+ T lymphocytes in HIV infected patients at resource limited settings. The absolute number of CD4+ T lymphocytes in blood is vital for evaluating HIV-infected patients and has important prognostic and therapeutic implications. Currently, these values are obtained through using a flow cytometer, which is a very expensive method. Moreover, we aim to develop technologies to capture various cell types from blood using nanoparticles, and microscale technologies.

Blood Fill

CD4+ T-Lymphocyte Capture Using a Disposable Microfluidic Chip for HIV

Using micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) to develop diagnostic tools

Rapid Inexpensive Bacteria Detection

Using the same technologies to capture HIV for rapid diagnosis and detection in resource-limited settings, we aim to expand the capabilities of our technology to enable rapid, inexpensive testing of the food supply for E.coli infection.