NSF Issues MIE’s Jinglei Ping Prestigious CAREER Award to Develop Novel Method for Detecting Genetic Materials

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The amplification-free electronic detection of genetic materials holds significant promise for advancing the point-of-care diagnostics of numerous diseases. The problem, however, is that current, state-of-the-art, all-electrical methods struggle to achieve high sensitivity and rapid detection simultaneously. To solve this vital problem, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a five-year, $550,000 CAREER Award to Assistant Professor Jinglei Ping of the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department. Ping’s NSF research will develop a trailblazing method for detecting genetic materials such as DNA and RNA by cleverly combining high sensitivity with speed to overcome the shortcomings of existing techniques. See NSF Award Search: Award # 2338857 - CAREER: Highly Rapid and Sensitive Nanomechanoelectrical Detection of Nucleic Acids.

As Ping explains, “The project will lead to compact, quick, accurate, and user-friendly devices for genetic-material detection. These devices operate by measuring the electrical responses of multiple genetic materials when they vibrate in an external electric field.” 

According to Ping, “Such innovation holds the potential to revolutionize bioengineering, enabling more-efficient testing of genetic materials, especially in [geographical] regions without advanced laboratory facilities. Consequently, it promises to enhance pandemic management and global healthcare.”

One goal of Ping’s proposed research is to boost both the sensitivity and time efficiency of nucleic-acid detection by two orders of magnitude. 

Ping says that his research project is highly innovative because it departs from the status quo of electrical, nucleic-acid sensors, which directly convert the occurrence of probe-target, nucleic-acid hybridization into electrical response. Instead, Ping aims to harness a new pathway he has already developed for nano-mechano-electrical “transduction,” or the conversion of mechanical vibration into electrochemical signals. 

Technically, the expected outcomes of this project are twofold. First, Ping and his team will achieve a comprehensive understanding of the nano-mechano-electrical transduction principle for maximizing the multiplexity, selectivity, and sensitivity in nucleic-acid detection.

Secondly, the team will achieve rapid, high-sensitivity, nucleic-acid detection by integrating nano-mechano-electrical transduction with microscale transversal “electrophoresis,” the term used to describe the motion of particles in a gel or fluid within a relatively uniform electric field. 

Ping expects these outcomes “to generate significant positive impact on bioengineering advancement and rapid, accurate, point-of-care, nucleic-acid testing.”

Ping heads the Ping Lab | Nano/Bio Interfaces & Applications, whose goal, he says, “is to determine the fundamental principles governing applications of nanomaterials and nanomaterial-based device structures in biotechnology, healthcare, environmental monitoring, and so on.” (April 2024)