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Sustainable agriculture with LEAFS: a low-cost electrochemical analyzer of foliage stress

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Winners: 2024 Outstanding Early Career Research Award of Sensors and Diagnostics

Sina Khazaee Nejad, Haozheng Ma, Abdulrahman Al-Shami, Ali Soleimani, Mona A. Mohamed, Preston Dankwah, Hannah J Lee and Maral Mousavi

Paper: Sustainable agriculture with LEAFS: a low-cost electrochemical analyzer of foliage stress

This award-winning research introduces LEAFS (Low-cost Electrochemical Analyzer of Foliage Stress) a portable, affordable, and highly sensitive tool for detecting salicylic acid (SA), a key plant stress biomarker. Unlike costly, lab-based methods, LEAFS is built with laser-induced graphene electrodes and leverages square wave voltammetry, making real-time, in-field plant health monitoring a reality. 

With a sensitivity of 144.28 渭A mM鈦宦 and a detection limit of 1.44 渭M, LEAFS was successfully tested on aloe vera and philodendron and promises broad applications in precision agriculture and food security. 

About the winners

Sina_Khazaee_Nejad

Sina Khazaee Nejad is a PhD student at the USC鈥疉lfred E.鈥疢ann鈥疍epartment of鈥疊iomedical Engineering. He earned his bachelor鈥檚 at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran in Electrical Engineering and has joined MADLab (Medical and Analytical Device Laboratory) in 2022. He has worked on developing wearable point-of-care devices and combining them with data processing techniques and machine learning algorithms.

Haozheng_Ma

Haozheng Ma earned his Bachelors at University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing in 浪花直播. He has worked on wearable biofluid sensors, and chemiluminescence methods for folic acid detection during his undergraduate at National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China. He moved to USC to pursue his Masters project in the fall of 2021 and joined MAD Lab at once, where he keeps his interest in developing wearable point-of-care devices, but more focusing on electrochemical methods with high sensitivity.

Abdulrahman_Al-shami

Abdulrahman Al-Shami earned his M.S. in Nanotechnology and Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan, in 2020. He got his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the same university in 2017. Abdulrahman joined USC and MAD lab as a Ph.D. student in the fall of 2022. His research interests focus on developing cost-effective point-of-care medical diagnostic tools to make healthcare better and available to everyone worldwide.

Ali_Soleimani

Ali Soleimani received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology (Iran) in 2020. In his undergraduate project, he designed a microfluidic device to separate tumor cells from normal blood cells. He joined MAD LAB as a Ph.D. student to pursue his research interest, design and fabrication of affordable biosensors.

Mona A Mohamed, Ph.D.,鈥痠s a Senior Research Associate at the University of Southern California. Her work centers on electrochemical biosensors, nanomaterials, and wearable health technologies. She has extensive expertise in analytical chemistry, biomedical engineering, and pharmaceutical quality control. 

Preston_Dankwah

Preston Dankwah is a Master of Engineering student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, with a concentration in Biomechanics. He earned his bachelor鈥檚 degree in biomedical engineering with a mechanical emphasis from the University of Southern California in 2024, where he worked as an undergraduate researcher in MAD Lab, and began his graduate studies in 2024.

Hannah_Lee

Hannah J Lee is an undergraduate senior at the University of Southern California majoring in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Health Care Studies, aspiring to pursue an MD or MD-PhD. She is currently researching cancer diagnostics and imaging in the Zavaleta Lab (Molecular Imaging and Nano Diagnostics Lab), specifically contributing to the development of a novel fluorescent nano-based imaging approach to help guide intra-operative solid tumor resection.

Maral_Mousavi

Maral Mousavi joined the department of biomedical engineering at USC in 2019 as an assistant professor. Maral鈥檚 research experiences and interests span from point-of-care diagnostics, to electrochemical sensors, wearable devices, neural probes, and tools for precision medicine. She received her B.S. from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. She completed her PhD studies in 2016 at the University of Minnesota, under advisement of Prof. Philippe Buhlmann, who is one of the world leaders in supramolecular electrochemical ion sensing. In her doctorate studies, she worked on electrochemical devices for sensing and energy storage, and use of fluorous compounds as novel materials for improving selectivity of potentiometric sensors. From 2016-2019, Maral was a postdoctoral fellow in the research group of Prof. George Whitesides at Harvard University, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, working on affordable diagnostic devices to make healthcare and analysis accessible to all.