May 26, 2017
The scientific basis for a single molecule measurement and single electron devices is over a century and half a century old, respectively. In this talk, I hope to illustrate how old ideas are fueled by present day possibilities, not necessarily to fulfill a need but to drive innovation by translating old science into modern technology. I will present two examples from our research propelled by the tsunami of nanotechnology. The first example is a transistor that is sensitive to single-electron charging to measure a single virus infection on a cell in real time. The second example is a device sensitive to reaction in zeptomole molecules that, may potentially lead to a simple blood test to screen for cancer well before clinical signatures.
Dr. Ravi Saraf's training is in polymer science, optics and Silicon processing. For the past fifteen years his research interests have been in the interfacial properties of materials, nanometer scale devices & their processing and, more recently, biophysics and bioengineering. An author/coauthor of 31 US Patents and 64 scientific publications, Saraf has focused on research in the basic sciences in order to solve practical problems. Before joining UNL he spent five years at Virginia Tech and 10 years at IBM's corporate research lab, the Thomas J. Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights. His Ph.D./M.S. is in Polymer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his B.S is in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.