Ateneo KISLAP

Introduction to Ateneo KISLAP

A growing need to develop the biosensing sector in the Philippines

Humanity has experienced numerous major viral outbreaks in the past two decades, namely: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), swine flu (H1N1 Influenza), Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Zika virus, and the most recent and still ongoing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) or more popularly known as Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We have seen firsthand how a pandemic can quickly get out of hand if we are unequipped with the proper technologies that can address these kinds of medical issues. Thus, research on biomedical sensors has been more prominent due to its advantages for applications related to clinical analysis and healthcare.

There is a growing interest in microring resonator (MRR)-based photonic integrated circuit (PIC) devices for their wide array of applications. MRR-based PIC is significant in optical fiber communications, multifunctional optical devices, optical add-drop multiplexer, modulators, interleavers, optical field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and others. In biosensing applications, optical ring resonators proved to be promising due to their advantages. Using photonic devices for biosensing applications presents a groundbreaking potential for medical diagnosis and monitoring to exhibit minimal intrusiveness, quick response time, and low power consumption.

Doing our part in innovating for good

The project, codenamed Ateneo Key Innovations in Sensing using Light and Photonics (KISLAP), takes an initial step towards developing these types of technologies by proposing a fundamental circuit design for an optical biosensor—the X-CRR. The X-CRR has the potential to be (1) faster at processing information and (2) more sensitive and selective compared to existing technologies thereby making the diagnosis of diseases quicker and more accurate.

Ateneo KISLAP aims to develop an optimized design for the sensor itself without the bioreceptors or the complete setup of the biosensor, however, ensuring that efforts towards this can be shared to other experts and our fellow students so that eventually, there will be more people working with us in pursuit of developing the photonics sector in the Philippines.

Ultimately, Ateneo KISLAP envisions to have these technologies readily available to us: initiating more innovation and preparing us for the next nationwide issue that can be addressed by new technologies.

References

[1] N. Bhalla, Y. Pan, Z. Yang, and A. F. Payam, "Opportunities and Challenges for Biosensors and Nanoscale Analytical Tools for Pandemics: COVID-19," ACS Nano, vol. 14, no. 7, pp. 7783-7807, 2020.