Sensing change: bioengineering for healthcare

Did you know that there are tiny particles in your body designed to carry cargo? They’re found everywhere, from blood to breast milk, and their outer shell cleverly mimics the cells around them. We can also use these cargo-carrying particles to design biosensors which can tell us if our cells are healthy or diseased. I’ll talk about my work looking for better ways to find these particles in bodily fluids, and how we can use them for biosensor design.

If I tell you to press hard, how hard would you press? Your definition of hard could be different to mine. And maybe it is not that important in day to day life when you are kneading dough or pressing buttons in an elevator. But now imagine you are a neurosurgeon and you are told to press “hard” to clamp an artery during surgery. In some situations, being able to precisely measure pressure is much more important. Join me over a pint in Hackney and I will tell you about my project that uses nanosensors on the fingertips of a glove to measure pressure of a surgeon’s touch!