Seminar Speaker: Dr. Han-Sheng Chuang (莊漢聲 教授)
Title: The Hidden Brownian Motion and Beyond: Toward Ultra-Sensitive Bead-Based Biosensors 你所不知道的布朗運動：超靈敏生醫感測
Date: 2021/12/16 (Thursday) 3:30 pm – 5:20pm
Location: video conference (https://reurl.cc/q18jL3)

Abstract:
Rapid and sensitive detection of diseases is pivotal in the early medical intervention. In this
talk, I would present a nature-driven sensing technique, diffusometry, which features no
power needed, simplicity, and high sensitivity. Translational Brownian motion as well as a
trivia behavior, termed rotational Brownian motion, were characterized and developed for
various rapid and highly sensitive detections in our past studies. In additional to the
fundamental investigations of translational Brownian motion and rotational Brownian
motion, four topical applications will be covered in this talk, including rapid AST, trace
proteins detection, rapid nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs), and anti-background
noise with a self-compensated algorithm. For the rapid AST, five bacterial strains and six
antibiotics were investigated. The AST outcomes were determined within 3.5 h, which is
much faster than the conventional standard that usually requires 3-5 days. For the trace
protein detection, our proposed sandwiched configuration greatly enhanced the sensitivity,
resulting in a limit of detection for some protein biomarkers down to 1 pg/mL. For the
rapid NAATs, uidA of E. Coli was used as a target gene. By simply monitoring the fluid
viscosity increase after amplification, 50 pg/µL of DNA in 30 min under PCR and 42.8
fg/µL in 10 min under loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) were successfully
achieved. In the last topic, a self-compensated algorithm based on particle tracking was
performed to mitigate the time-dependent background noises originated from

environmental temperature and viscosity variations. Up to 37.7 fold improvement was
achieved as compared with the conventional way without the self-compensation. The high
stability enables data consistency and accuracy between and within measurements. Overall,
this novel use of diffusometry and developments for biosensing provides new insight to
future downstream applications and early disease control.


Biography:
Dr. Han-Sheng Chuang, is currently a full professor in the Department of Biomedical
Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan. Dr. Chuang received his
bachelor and master degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NCKU in 1998
and 2000, respectively. He joined the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) as a R&D
engineer in 2001. Later, he worked with Professor Steve T. Wereley on advanced microfluidics
and received his Ph.D. from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, USA in
2010. He and his research colleagues were the finalists of the prestigious Burton D. Morgan
Business Competition twice in 2008 and 2009. After graduation, he received a postdoctoral
appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at University
of Pennsylvania, USA and worked with Professor Haim H. Bau on cell sorting and
Caenorhabditis elegans until the summer of 2011. Up to date, he has received the 2014 and 2019
Young Researcher Career Grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the 2015 Young
Scholar Award from the Taiwan Comprehensive University System, and the 2016 Excellent
Teaching Award and the 2020 Excellent Research Award from NCKU. In addition, he was once a
cofounder of a US-based start-up, Microfluidic Innovations, during 2009-2017, and is currently
president of the Association of Chemical Sensors in Taiwan and an associate editor of the journal
of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. Dr. Chuang has dedicated to the research in
bio-microfluidics more than a decade. His research interests are mainly focused on bio-
microfluidic sensors, Bio-MEMS/NEMS, optical diagnostics, and biomechanics of C. elegans.