Speaker-Zhaoli Gao
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Dr. Gao received his BEng (2008), MPhil (2010), and PhD (2014) from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. From 2014 to 2019, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, he joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2025. His research focuses on developing label-free biomarker detection strategies utilizing low-dimensional carbon nanomaterials. He holds one granted U.S. patent, one filed U.S. provisional patent, and two pending Chinese patents. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. Dr. Gao has received several teaching awards, including the Best Teacher Award (2021–22) from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Dean’s Exemplary Teaching Award (2022), and the CUHK Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award (2022).
Developing a real-life “medical tricorder” that is sensitive, versatile, and user-friendly for biomarker detection has long been considered the holy grail of biomedical sensing. In our lab, we are working to bring this vision closer to reality by leveraging sp²-bonded carbon nanomaterials produced through scalable chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Our goal is to
develop label-free, sensitive biosensing strategies for early disease diagnosis and continuous health monitoring. In this talk, I will first highlight our progress in the large-scale CVD synthesis of low-dimensional carbons, spanning 1D to 3D structures, both crystalline and quasicrystalline. I will discuss how their unique electrical properties can be harnessed for biomarker detection. Next, I will showcase three label-free sensor platforms developed in our lab: 1) graphene field-effect transistor arrays for detecting nucleic acids and metal ions, 2) graphene Hall sensors for real-time magnetic biomarker sensing, and 3) gradient porous graphene electrodes for wearable sweat analysis and on-body health monitoring. Finally, I will discuss our ongoing work on wearable electronics using carbon nanotube yarns drawn via van der Waals interactions. These developments underscore our efforts to develop a universal label-free biosensing platform, paving the way for the realization of a true “medical tricorder”
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