Biosensors for Preventive Health Monitoring

This practice-oriented research project starts from the urgent societal need for accessible and reliable technologies to map environment-related health risks. Conventional analytical methods are expensive, complex, and centralized, which limits their use in education, citizen science, and international contexts. By using whole-cell biosensors—living cells that produce a visual signal upon detection of specific contaminants—this project offers a low-threshold and biological alternative for measuring toxic substances such as heavy metals in water and food samples.

The project addresses the central research question: how can we develop and deploy accessible, affordable, and user-friendly biosensors for environment-related health monitoring? This is explored through three sub-questions: (1) how can existing biosensor prototypes be optimized in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and robustness? (2) how do these sensors perform in realistic, low-tech usage environments, and can they be validated in such settings? And (3) how can end users be actively involved in the design, use, and responsible deployment of this technology?