Reisner Nanobiophysics Lab

Welcome! Our lab uses nanofluidic technology to probe biological systems at their smallest scales, develop new tools to monitor/diagnose disease and quantify physics of biosystems “bottom-up” from analyzing individual biomolecules and bioparticles.  Nanofluidic systems are networks of nanoscale fluid-filled components on a chip, such as nanochannels/nanopores, built using the same nanofabrication tools used to build computer chips.  Due to their small size, nanofluidic components can manipulate, confine and interrogate individual biomolecules/bioparticles.   These “single molecule” measurements can be used to analyze heterogeneous biological systems without losing/distorting information via need for ensemble averaging/molecular amplification.  Hand in hand with developing new types of nanofluidic tools, we elucidate fundamental soft-matter physics and biophysical questions arising in the context of nanoconfined systems.

Recent and on-going research projects include:

• Dual nanopore devices for DNA feature mapping and nanostructure analysis

• Quantifying interacting DNA molecules in a nanoscale box that can be opened and closed via pneumatic pressure

• Parallel nanoconfinement achieved via tunable/dynamic electric fields applied at nanoelectrode wells

• Nanofluidic and nanophotonic technologies for analyzing extracellular vesicles (with S. Mahshid)

• Fabricating nanopores via atomic force microscope (with P. Grutter)

The lab is always looking for talented students and postdoctoral fellows, please do not hesitate to contact us.  Note we can accept students through McGill's Physics, Bioengineering, Quantitative Life Sciences and Biophysics graduate programs.  

Links

• McGill Physics

• CPM

• RQMP

Biophysics at McGill

• Paul Wiseman

• Peter Grutter

• Sara Mahshid 

• Gary Brouhard

• Stephanie Weber 

• Adam Hendricks 

Nanofluidics Worldwide

• Robert Austin

• Sandra Troian

• Derek Stein

• Robert Riehn

• Jonas Tegenfeldt

• Jongyoon Han

• Kevin Dorfman

• Gary Slater

• Chia-Fu Chou

• Patrick Doyle

• Fredrik Westerlund

• Madhavi Krishnan

• Rodolphe Marie