Dr. Eric Stern

The PhysOrg article Sensitive nanowire disease detectors made by Yale scientists said

Yale scientists have created nanowire sensors coupled with simple microprocessor electronics that are both sensitive and specific enough to be used for point-of-care (POC) disease detection, according to a report in Nano Letters.
 
The sensors use activation of immune cells by highly specific antigens — signatures of bacteria, viruses or cancer cells — as the detector. When T cells are activated, they produce acid, and generate a tiny current in the nanowire electronics, signaling the presence of a specific antigen. The system can detect as few as 200 activated cells.
 
“We simply took direction from Mother Nature and used the exquisitely sensitive and flexible detection of the immune system as the detector, and a basic physiological response of immune cells as the reporter,” said postdoctoral fellow and lead author, Eric Stern. “We coupled that with existing CMOS electronics to make it easily usable.”

Eric Stern, Ph.D. is Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Tarek Fahmy at Yale and Professor David Mooney at Harvard University. His research activities include the study of nanoscale electronics and their applications to chem- and biosensing, the development of techniques for conferring chemical functionality to surfaces, and the development of novel drug delivery systems.
 
Eric is the author of 14 peer-reviewed papers and three review articles and holds two provisional patents. His awards include a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (2004), a Department of Homeland Security Graduate Fellowship (2004), the Franz B. Tuteur Memorial Prize for the best Yale Engineering undergraduate research project (2003), a Yale University Academic Distinction for taking the most classes ever as an undergraduate (2003), and he was a Top 40 finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search (1999).
 
He coauthored An intracellular protein that binds amyloid-Β peptide and mediates neurotoxicity in Alzheimer’s disease, Label-free immunodetection with CMOS-compatible semiconducting nanowires, Role of ERAB/l-3-Hydroxyacyl-coenzyme A Dehydrogenase Type II Activity in AΒ-induced Cytotoxicity, Electrical characterization of single GaN nanowires, Methods for fabricating Ohmic contacts to nanowires and nanotubes, and Comparison of laser-ablation of hot-wall chemical vapor deposition techniques for nanowire fabrication.
 
Eric earned his B.S. in Chemistry with Honors from Yale University in 2003. He earned his M.S/B.S. in Electrical Engineering with Honors from Yale in 2003. He earned his M.Phil. in Biomedical Engineering with a 4.0 GPA from Yale in 2005 and he earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering under the direction of Professor Mark Reed from Yale University in 2007. His thesis was Label-Free Sensing with Semiconducting Nanowires.
 
Read Engineers Make Standardized Bulk Synthesis of Nanowires Possible and Breakthrough in nanodevice synthesis revolutionizes biological sensors.