ABSTRACT: In recent years, sensor research has experienced a revolution, promising to have a significant impact on a broad range of applications relating to national security, health care and medicine, the environment, energy, food safety, and manufacturing etc. This presentation will discuss some of the key technological developments of chemical and biosensors, particularly, the real-time electrochemical sensor technology that has taken place in the past decades in our laboratory for health, environmental and energy applications. It will include a few topics: (1) general theory of sensors; (2) basic characteristics and applications of sensors; (3) unique sensing elements and interface reactions such as peptides, conductive polymers, ionic liquids and nanocrystals in our sensing strategy to achieve in situ and real time detection of important chemical and bioanalytes with high temporal and spatial resolution. Our fundamental and applied research at solid/liquid/gas interfaces allows us to address many sensors challenges, especially miniaturized, real-time and continuous sensing that are essential for their integration with engineering advancements such as portable electronics, networked sensing and next-generation monolithic implementation of autonomous sensors with the performance, cost, power, and operational lifetime characteristics to suit a broad range of applications in health, environment and energy applications

SHORT BIO: Xiangqun Zeng is currently a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. She recently accepted a joint full professor position at departments of chemistry, chemical and biomedical engineering at University of Missouri Columbia starting Jan. 1, 2024. Dr. Zeng received her Ph.D. in electrochemistry and surface chemistry from State University of New York at Buffalo, her M.S. in Electroanalytical Chemistry from Beijing Normal University and her B.S. in Analytical Chemistry from Sichuan University in China. Her research interests lie at materials and interface science. Currently, her lab studies fundamental interfacial phenomena at electrode interfaces for the development of next generation detection technologies, i.e., in vitro, ex vivo, in vivo, in situ detection and quantification of molecules and species of chemical and biological significance with high sensitivity and specificity at high temporal and/or spatial resolution for a broad range of applications including health, environment and energy applications. She has nine patents and published over 100 high quality peer review papers and six book chapters which summarize her significant contributions to applied electrochemistry, analytical chemistry and sensor fields. She has mentored over 80 students/postdocs/visiting scholars including a Fulbright scholar. Seventeen of her former trainees obtained competitive academic positions in US and other countries. She is an organizer for the 18th international meeting on chemical sensors in 2021 and an Editorial Board member of Journal of Electrochemistry. She has received numerous awards to recognize her work including Frank Giblin Lifetime Achievement Award (2020) that is given to the principal investigator with the most funding over the course of a faculty’s career at Oakland University. More information can be found at her website: www.oakland.edu/~zeng