Dr. Aggeliki Tserepi Dr. Angeliki Tserepi received the B.Sc. Degree in Physics from the Univ. of Athens in 1985, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the OSU, USA, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. She held a Post-Doctoral (“Marie Curie”) European Fellowship at the University Joseph Fourier of Grenoble, France (1994-1996), and at the Institute of Microelectronics (IMEL)–NCSR "Demokritos", Greece (1996-1997). Since 1997, she is with INN (former IMEL) working on plasma processing of materials for applications in micro- nano(bio)technology and microsystem fabrication. Her current interests include plasma-based surface engineering for control of wettability, biomolecule immobilization and cell attachment on surfaces, as well as development of microfluidic and Lab-on-a-chip (LoC) devices. She is the author/co-author of 9 patents and more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals (with more than 2500 citations and h-index=28), and editor of 2 special issues.
The development of integrated, fast and affordable platforms for pathogen detection is an emerging area where a multidisciplinary approach is necessary for designing flexible microsystems; these new technologies promise a significant advancement of the current state of analytical testing leading to improved healthcare and food safety. In this work we are aiming towards the development of a lab-on-chip microsystem platform for the genetic analysis of Salmonella in milk samples. The heart of this platform is an acoustic detection biochip incorporating an array of Love wave acoustic sensors, integrated with a microfluidic module. This detection platform is combined with a cell capture and DNA purification module as well as a micro-PCR module, responsible for performing sample pre-treatment, bacteria lysis, nucleic acid purification and amplification. Current results show that a limit of detection of 5 bacteria can be reached through acoustic sensing without the use of any labels for signal transduction amplification. This system is expected to have a significant impact in food-pathogen detection by providing for the first time an integrated detection test for Salmonella screening in a very short time.