The University of New England has been included in a near $6 million EPSCoR grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the University of New Hampshire (UNH) to develop sensors for supporting quality control in biomanufacturing and biotechnology.
Eva Rose Balog, Ph.D., associate professor and assistant academic director of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, will represent UNE on an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Jeffrey Halpern, Ph.D., associate professor of chemical engineering at UNH and principal investigator on the grant.
Auburn University, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Maine are also partners on the research project, which will consist of four collaborative projects focusing on sensor components. The components will be integrated into a single sensor device in Halpern’s Surface Enhanced Electrochemical Diagnostic Sensors (SEEDS) Lab.
Biomanufacturing is a growing sector of the economy. According to Balog, the NSF grant will allow the researchers to capitalize on the sector’s growth and make further advances.