The research in my group is aimed at the development of novel materials, mainly polymeric in nature, for use in (1) separations and (2) sensing of biological and chemical species.

With respect to separations, our efforts are focused on the design of polymeric, polymer-silica composites and polymer monolithic stationary phases. The judicious choice of the functional entities incorportated into the polymer matrix can be used to tune the mode of separation such as affinity, ion exchange, reversed phase, etc. We are also working on preparing a group of chemically "switchable" stationary phases.

We are also involved in the design of microfluidic/lab-on-a-chip systems for use in biological and evironmental analysis.

With respect to sensing, we focus our efforts on the design of polymers that present specific functionalities that can respond to specific classes of compounds. We focus primarily on the detection of explosive, environmental and biological materials. By incorporating fluorescent species into our polymers, we can observe changes in the fluorescence response such as enhancement, quenching, lifetime, energy transfer and anisotropy as a function of the species of interest.