Sarioglu Wins NSF CAREER Award

Fatih Sarioglu has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his research project entitled “Feedback-Controlled Microfluidic Chips with Integrated Sensor Networks for Blood Analysis.”

Technologies that can rapidly characterize blood samples and extract reliable information are in ever-increasing demand for both clinical and basic research applications. In this project, Sarioglu aims to develop smart and adaptive microfluidic chips that can reliably analyze small blood samples with minimal sample preparation. 

The proposed microfluidic chips will be low-cost and disposable, and they will include built-in electronics that can convert the chemical information from blood cells into electrical signals to be interpreted by a smartphone and transmitted to the healthcare provider. If successful, the research has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by enabling complex blood tests to be performed outside of clinical laboratories.

Sarioglu has been an assistant professor at the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) since 2014. He and his research team develop technologies to investigate and manipulate biological systems on the micro and nanoscale primarily for biomedical applications. Using advanced fabrication techniques, they build devices that utilize microfluidics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), optics, electronics, and data analytics. Through clinical collaborations, they use these technologies as medical devices for disease detection and monitoring and as bioanalytical instruments for high-throughput molecular and cellular analysis.

Sarioglu is a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, and he is a program faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program. In 2017, Sarioglu received the Beckman Young Investigator Award for his outstanding work in the chemical and life sciences.