Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta

Yi Lu

Biography

Professor Yi Lu received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1992. After two years of postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1994. He is now a HHMI Professor in the U of I Department of Chemistry and a part-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute 3D Micro- and Nanosystems group. Professor Lu is also affiliated with the Departments of Biochemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, the Biotechnology Center, and the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. His fields of professional interest are design and selection of protein and nucleic acid enzymes with potential applications in biocatalysis, sensing and directed assembly of functional biomaterials.

Research Interest

Lu's group is using rational design and combinatorial engineering methods to obtain proteins and DNA/RNA for directed assembly of nano- or colloidal particles and for gated control of nanofluidic devices. These objects can be hierarchically integrated to possess high functional complexity. Success in this undertaking will lead to robust structures for a range of applications, such as selective sensing in environmental and homeland security applications, medical imaging using fluorescence and MRI, targeted drug delivery, nanoporous catalytic materials for organic transformation and for bioremediation, as well as new, integrated nanofabrication strategies in 3D for electronic, magnetic, and photonic systems.