May 28, 2019

Science on Tap: How materials science can assist food and water safety

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Lia Stanciu, professor and associate head in Purdue University’s School of Materials Engineering, will speak at the next Science on Tap on detecting E. coli and heavy metal contaminants in food and water.

The talk, titled “Keeping Food and Water Safe with Materials Science,” will take place at 6-7 p.m. Thursday (May 30) at the Lafayette Brewing Company, 622 Main St., Lafayette. The talk is free and open to anyone 21 and older.

Stanciu will discuss the importance of finding a real-time, portable and cost-efficient device for monitoring food and water safety. Early detection of contaminants from pathogens, industrial waste and the degradation of plastic bottles is necessary to ensure public safety. Despite recent advances of sensing in the research field, transferring lab-scale platforms successfully to commercialization stages are dramatically low. In the talk, Stanciu will discuss the practicality of using both biological and nonbiological materials for contaminants. She will address how simultaneous biological and nonbiological testing would work.

Stanciu received her doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis. She has been at Purdue since 2005 and has research interests in biological and chemical sensors.

Science on Tap, led by graduate students Elizabeth Phillips, Matthew Pharris, Emma Lendy and Aswathy Chandran, provides Purdue faculty and collaborating researchers the opportunity to share research activities in an informal setting with presentations designed to appeal to a more general audience.

Writer: Madison Sanneman, 317-903-5642, msannema@purdue.edu 

Source: Emma Lendy, elendy@purdue.edu 

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