Yanan Lab Receives $1.8M NSF Grant for Next-Generation Plasmonic Biosensors

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems has awarded Prof. Yanan Huang a four-year, $1.8 million grant under the program Biosensing for Biomedical Applications.

The project, titled “Hotspot-Enhanced SERS Nanoprobes for Circulating Tumor DNA Detection at Sub-Attomolar Concentrations”, will fund three PhD students and one postdoc over the grant period. It will also support the purchase of a new confocal Raman microscopy system for the lab.

“This grant will let us push the sensitivity frontier of SERS biosensing into truly clinically relevant territory,” said Prof. Chen. “We want to detect cancer biomarkers early enough to matter.”

The project begins January 2025 and runs through December 2028.