Micro and Nanostructured Sensors and Biosensing Applications

MSN 513 is about turning biological recognition events—an antibody binding its antigen, an enzyme cleaving a substrate, a strand of DNA finding its complement—into measurable electrical, optical, or mechanical signals at the micro and nanoscale, and understanding why every choice from surface chemistry to transducer geometry shapes what you can actually detect. You'll work through the full sensor stack via lectures, two quizzes, a midterm and final, and a term project where you design or critique a real biosensing scheme end-to-end. As a graduate elective it sits at the intersection of MEMS, materials, and bioengineering, and it's the natural bridge for anyone heading into point-of-care diagnostics, lab-on-chip research, or nanophotonic sensing.