Training sessions H2020 MSCA-Excellent Science Project Ipanema

Dr Arben Merkoçi, researcher from Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), CSIC and The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain, held an online lecture to the audience participating in the IPANEMA project, but also to all the interested members from the Center from Sensing Technologies entitled: “Sustainable Nanotech-based Diagnostics Devices for Democratized Diagnostics”. Dr Merkoçi talk was focused on Point of care devices (POC) which are a great alternative to face overall urgent needs but also for our everyday health care and environment control. The development of POCs is one of the most important R&D in the areas of health diagnostics, environment control, safety/security control of food. The development of such devices is strongly related to new materials and technologies being nanomaterials and nanotechnology of special role. How to design simple plastic/paper-based biosensor architectures including wearables through printing or stamping? How to tune their analytical performance upon demand? How one can couple nanomaterials with paper/plastics and what is the benefit? Which are the perspectives to link these simple platforms and detection technologies with mobile communication? Dr Merkoçi gave responses to these questions through various interesting examples with extreme interest for clinical and environment emergency applications that include important biomarkers (ex. cancer cells, viruses etc.) as well as highly toxic compounds in the environment (heavy metals, pesticides). Dr Vasa Radonić, Dr Slavica Savić, Dr Marko Radović, and MSc Stefan Jarić, as team members of MicroLabAptaSens project, participated in the event.