King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

                                           Chemistry Department     

Chemical and biosensors, especially in their miniaturized form provide a convenient analytical tool for quantifications of various analytes in a broad range of applications. In a real world scenario, precision, accuracy and validity are the key criteria of a reliable sensor and the quest of such sensors remains the cornerstone of the sensor research. Partial selectivity is achieved in most cases via orthogonal materials (e.g., polymers) and array designs but sensors that are free of false positives and false negatives are still elusive. We are tackling these issues by taking a different approach where we take advantage of the higher order sensing where multiple transduction principles (e.g., Electrochemical and QCM (EQCM)) and plural sensors (EQCM arrays) are simultaneously interrogated for the solution of the same detection problem. Each EQCM sensor comprises a QCM mass sensor and an electrochemical sensor that allow real time in situ measurement of the mass changes and the interfacial redox/impedance processes during the electrochemical perturbation of the interfaces. Hence, the data acquisition channels and the resulting information content is increased, leading to the specificity comparable to biosensors in addition to the internal validation of the data. The viability of this approach has been demonstrated by developing the first real EQCM sensors for explosives and bacterial detections.

Dr. Abdul Rehman is currently serving as Assistant Professor at KFUPM (Chemistry Department). He earned his Ph.D. in Analytical & Food chemistry (University of Vienna, Austria) under the supervision of Professor Franz Dickert where he was developing nanostructured materials and sensors for online monitoring of industrial and environmental processes. Later, he won a prestigious Austrian fellowship (Erwin Schrödinger postdoctoral fellowship) to work in Professor Mark Meyerhoff's group (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA) researching on biocompatible polymers for in-vivo blood sensors and devices. He also worked in Professor Xiangqun Zeng's group (Oakland University, Rochester, USA) investigating the integration of various sensor platforms for critical real world applications. Afterwards, he joined Oakland University as visiting assistant professor where he stayed for 2 years. He also served as instructor in various institutes of Canada including Trent University in Peterborough and Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

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  Courtesy: SAICSC-ACS