Shana Kelley, a pioneer in translational bioanalytical research, joins Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Professor Shana Kelley will join Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry and Department of Biomedical Engineering, and be affiliated with the International Institute for Nanotechnology.
Kelley, previously a University Professor at the University of Toronto, is an internationally renowned researcher that has developed innovative and translational methods for tracking molecular and cellular analytes with unprecedented sensitivity. Her novel approaches integrate nanoscience, bioanalytical science, and engineering.
“We could not be happier with the results of this collaboration with McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Department of Chemistry,” says Adrian Randolph, Dean of Weinberg College. “Professor Kelley is an extraordinary teacher-scholar, whose interdisciplinary work will produce new intellectual initiatives at Northwestern at the intersection of fundamental and translational science.”
Kelley perfected a groundbreaking method for nucleic acid detection that uses high surface area nanoscale gold-based sensors. Kelley is also well-known for the development of new methods to detect circulating cancer cells and delivery systems that leverage mitochondrial penetrating peptides and related materials. Her most recent work has focused on developing new high throughput omics approaches for the discovery and development of cell-based and molecular therapies.
“I am incredibly excited to join the outstanding community of colleagues, students, and staff at Northwestern. Translational science is incredibly strong at Northwestern and this is the ideal place for the next generation of our projects focused on diagnostic and therapeutic development,” says Kelley.
Kelley and her team of researchers pioneered the use of nanostructured materials to develop high-sensitivity electrochemical sensors for biomolecular analytes, according to the Kelley Lab website. In the past decade, her research group has “applied these sensors to a range of biological targets relevant to the diagnosis of cancer and infectious disease, and … other areas related to transplant and regenerative medicine.”
In a recent seminar, Kelley discussed her latest translational biomedical engineering research on three-dimensional sensors that leverage electrocatalytic nucleic acids for biomolecular detection. She explores the applications for “on-demand viral detection” where viruses could be detected in saliva, and the potential for scaling the sensors for clinical diagnostic platforms.
Kelley’s research has been published in top journals including, Nature Chemistry, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Kelley has received many awards and distinctions, including the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, the NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship, and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. She also is a Fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineers and most recently, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
Kelley is also a recipient of the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Dreyfus New Faculty Award.
Kelley serves as a Board Director for the Fight Against Cancer Innovation Trust (FACIT) and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and she is Associate Editor for ACS Sensors. She also serves as an Editorial Advisory Board Member for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nano Letters, and ACS Nano.
Kelley received her B.A. in chemistry from Seton Hall University and her Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. She completed her NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Scripps Research Institute and started her career at Boston College.
A “Top 100 Innovator” in MIT’s Technology Review, Kelley is also an inventor, with over 50 issued patents. As a successful entrepreneur, she also founded three molecular diagnostics companies based on her research discoveries, two of which have been acquired by large bioanalytical companies.
Ted Sargent, an internationally renowned researcher in nanotechnology, joins Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor Ted Sargent will join Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and be affiliated with the International Institute for Nanotechnology.
Sargent is a creative and innovative scholar known for his groundbreaking research in nanoscience. His research has contributed to fundamental advances in nanotechnology and materials chemistry.
Sargent is currently a University Professor at the University of Toronto, where he serves as the Vice President of Research and Innovation, and previously served as Vice President – International, and, prior to that, Vice Dean of Research in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.
“Professor Sargent,” states Adrian Randolph, Dean of Weinberg College, “brings to Northwestern extraordinary experience as a sterling researcher, a terrific communicator, and a gifted academic administrator. I and colleagues across the university look forward to collaborating with Ted in transformative and innovative ways.”
Sargent’s approach to research is multidisciplinary and blends state-of-the-art inorganic and physical chemistry. His work has impacted the global nanotechnology community, notably, his development of solar cells and light sensors based on solution-processed semiconductors and colloidal quantum dot optoelectronic devices. He also created exceedingly sensitive light detectors to enable image acquisition in low and infrared components.
Sargent is recognized worldwide for pioneering translational discoveries that have revolutionized engineering applications, including novel engineering devices for energy harvesting, light sensing and emission, and medical diagnosis.
As an international research collaborator, Sargent focuses on solving challenges that impact the broader global community. With the growth of the renewable electricity industry, Sargent’s research seeks solutions that can reduce carbon intensity, including electrification and electrocatalytic technology, and novel ways of harvesting energy. His research on perovskites, colloidal quantum dots, and luminescent solar concentrators to harvest energy has “significantly increased these technologies’ efficiencies, contributing to clean, renewable, flexible, affordable, and storable renewable energy and renewable chemicals,” according to Sargent.
“I’m excited to join Northwestern because its world-renowned faculty members have been doing cross-cutting, highly collaborative, interdisciplinary research … since long before the world was talking about this mode of research,” said Sargent. “It’s clear that, culturally, scholars at NU insist on working at, and across, boundaries among traditional fields. They work on mission-oriented problems, and they bring deep scientific expertise and extreme rigor to all that they do.”
In 2020, Sargent and his collaborators developed a novel tandem solar cell, a highly efficient and less costly solar cell. These findings could significantly impact next-generation solar technologies and the solar energy industry.
Sargent also recently presented “Using Nanomaterials to Build Molecules” at the 2020 IIN Virtual Symposium, which was hosted by the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University.
Through interdisciplinary research with material computationalists and synthetic chemists, Sargent’s work also focuses on discovering new semiconducting materials for use in on-chip signal processing. This research has implications in machine learning and optoelectronic applications.
Sargent has published over 550 peer-reviewed publications, which have been cited over 60,000 times. His book, The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives (Penguin) was published in 2005 in Canada and the United States and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, and Arabic.
Sargent has received many awards and honors, including the NSERC Brockhouse Canada Prize in Interdisciplinary Research and Engineering, the Killam Prize in Engineering from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2020, and Elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society of Canada.
Sargent received his B.Sc. in engineering from Queen’s University and his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Toronto.
Sargent is also an entrepreneur — founding several companies to commercialize his groundbreaking discoveries — and has 64 patents/patent applications. He has also served as an Associate Editor of the ACS journal ACS Photonics.