Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
Biography
Shramik Sengupta is an associate professor with the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. The objective of his research is to develop rapid diagnostic technologies that can be used in the “real world,” where the species of interest (animal cells, microorganisms or macromolecules) are either present at very low concentrations, or are mixed with a large number of other related species. To do so, Sengupta tries to apply the principles of Separations Science (that are usually the domain of Chemical Engineers) and Electrical Detection Technologies (that are usually the domain of Biomedical / Electrical Engineers) in a manner that best tackles the problem at hand.
Sengupta’s main areas of research include
- Microchannel Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (m-EIS) for the real time detection of living/ dying microorganisms at low concentrations in complex media: During my post-doctoral work, he invented this technique to measure “bulk capacitance” in suspensions, and showing its correlation with the number of living microorganisms in suspensions. Since taking up a faculty position, I have further refined the technique and demonstrated its application to areas of food/water quality, blood culture, antibiotic susceptibility testing and the detection and drug susceptibility testing of mycobacteria. His important publications in this area are as below:
- “Detection by death: A rapid way to detect viable slow-growing microorganisms achieved using microchannel Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (m-EIS)” Roli Kargupta, Yongqiang Yang, Sachidevi Puttaswamy, Aiden J Lee, Nicholas A Padilla, Alex P Foutch, Shramik Sengupta* Technology https://doi.org/10.1142/S2339547818500012 (2018)
- “Rapid culture-based detection of living mycobacteria using microchannel electrical impedance spectroscopy (m-EIS)” Roli Kargupta, Sachidevi Puttaswamy, Aiden J Lee, Timothy E Butler, Zhongyu Li, Sounak Chakraborty, Shramik Sengupta*. Biological Research 50:21 DOI 10.1186/s40659-017-0126-7 (2017)
- “Rapid Detection of Viable Bacteria System and Method” – Shramik Sengupta, Hsueh-Chia Chang, Sachidevi Puttaswamy (US Patent Number 8,635,028)
- Sachidevi Puttaswamy, Byug-Doo. Lee, Banoo Amighi, Sounak Chakraborty, Shramik Sengupta* “Novel Electrical Method for the Rapid determination of Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) and Assay of Bactericidal/Bacteriostatic Activity” Journal of Biosensors and Bioelectronics s2:003 (2012)
- Separations Science: He has worked on developing a number of separation/isolation approaches for species of interest for specific applications. These include (a) isolating low-abundance circulating tumor cells, (b) using a timed “kinetically limited” approach to optimize the collection of cells of interest from complex mixtures, (c) modlulating medium properties to enhance the separability of species during dielectrophoresis (DEP), etc. Publications relevant to this area of research include:
- CM. O’Brien, K.D. Rood, S.K. Gupta, J.D. Mosley , B.S. Goldschmidt, N. Sharma, S. Sengupta, J. A. Viator* “Isolation of circulating tumor cells using photo-acoustic flowmetry and two phase flow” Journal of Biomedical Optics. 17(6): 061221 (2012)
- J.Tan, B-D Lee, L. Polo-Parada, S Sengupta* ““Kinetically Limited” Differential Centrifugation as an inexpensive and readily available alternative to Centrifugal Elutriation”. Biotechniques 53(2): 104-108 (2012)
- S. Sengupta, N. Thomas, P.W. Todd*: “Multistage Electrophoresis II. Treatment of a Kinetic Separation as a Pseudo-equilibrium Process” Electrophoresis, 23 (13), 2064-2073 (2002)
- Z Gagnon, JE Gordon, S Sengupta, H-C Chang “Bovine red blood cell starvation age discrimination through a glutaraldehyde-amplified dielectrophoretic approach with buffer selection and membrane cross-linking” Electrophoresis 29, 2272-2279 (2008)
- Microfluidics: Sengupta developed a microfluidic flow sensor that was incorporated into a microfluidic controlled system for studying protein crystallization. Also involved in other projects that required my assistance with fabricating microfluidic devices. Relevant publications include:
- Masano Sugiyama, Shramik Sengupta, Paul W Todd, Victor H Barocas “Concentration control for protein crystallization via a continuously-fed crystallization chamber” Lab-on-a-chip 8, 1398- 1401 (2008)
- Shramik Sengupta, Goher Mahmud, Daniel J. Chiou, Babak Ziaie, Victor H Barocas – “Application of the Lag-After- Pulsed-Separation (LAPS) Flow Meter to Different Protein Solutions” Analyst 130, 171-178 (2005)
- Shramik Sengupta, Babak Ziaie, Victor H Barocas: “Lag-After-Pulsed-Separation Flowmeter for Biomacromolecular solutions” Sensors and Actuators B, 99(1), 25-29 (2004)
- Satyajyoti Senapati, Andrew R. Mahon, Jason Gordon, Carsten Nowak, Shramik Sengupta, Thomas H.Q. Powell, Jeffrey Feder, David M. Lodge, Hsueh-Chia Chang “Rapid on-chip genetic detection microfluidic platform for real world applications” Biomicrofluidics, 3, 022407 (2009)
Education
Postdoctoral training at the University of Notre Dame
PhD from the University of Minnesota
MS from the University of Colorado at Boulder
B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India)
Technical Focus
Biomedical diagnostics microfluidics
Electrical impedance spectroscopy