Portable Optical Diagnostics for Early Malaria Detection
Malaria is a global health concern, with over 400,000 deaths annually. Similar to many viruses, a person can be infected with the malaria parasite and not exhibit symptoms. Therefore, in order to eradicate malaria, it is necessary to identify and treat both the symptomatic patients and asymptomatic carriers. We have developed a diagnostic method based on optical differential spectroscopy for performing rapid screening of unprocessed whole blood samples. The portable system has demonstrated the ability to detect clinically relevant concentrations of the malaria biomarker, hemozoin, as well as synthetic hemozoin in initial trials.
Instructor
Andrea Armani
Andrea Armani received her BA in physics from the University of Chicago (2001) and her PhD in applied physics with a minor in biology from the California Institute of Technology (2007), where she continued as the Clare Boothe Luce post-doctoral Fellow in biology and chemical engineering. She is currently the Ray Irani Chair in Engineering and Materials Science and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science with courtesy appointments in Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering as well as Chemistry in the Dornsife College at the University of Southern California. She is the Director of the Northrop Grumman-Institute of Optical Nanomaterials and Nanophotonics at USC. She is also the Director of the W. M. Keck Photonics Cleanroom as well as the soon to open John D. O’Brien Nanofabrication Laboratory, two core nanofabrication cleanrooms at USC. She spent her 2015 sabbatical at Northrop Grumman as a Northrop Faculty Fellow.
Prof. Armani is actively involved in several different professional societies, serving on and chairing conference technical committees for IEEE, OSA, and SPIE. She routinely serves on review panels for NSF, NIH, and ARPA-E, is an Editorial Advisory Board member for ACS Photonics, and was an associate editor for Optics Letters (2011-2017). She is a member of AAAS and NAI, a senior member of IEEE and AIChE, a Fellow of OSA and SPIE, and a full member of Sigma Xi. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer for SPIE and for OSA. She is also the advisor for the USC student chapters of AIChE and OSA/SPIE.
Prof. Armani has received several awards for research and mentoring, including the ONR Young Investigator Award, Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program New Investigator Award, NIH New Innovator Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The translational impact of her research on broader society and her thought leadership has been recognized by her being named a Technology Review Top 35 Innovators under 35, Popular Science’s Brilliant 10, World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist, STS Forum Future Leader, and World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader. In addition, her dedication to mentoring the next generation of scientists and engineers has been recognized with the USC Mellon Mentoring Award for Undergraduate Mentoring and the Hanna Reisler Award for Mentoring.
Publication Year: 2018
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