May 19, 2024 – Graduate student, Nicole Malofsky, competed in the Nashville Women’s Triathlon.

December 8, 2023 – Graduate student, Dalton Nelson, completed a 3 month biotechnology internship at Thermo Fisher Scientific, with former lab member Nicholas Adams.

November 13-15, 2023 – Vanderbilt hosted a Nature Conference: Bioengineering for Global Health. Four Haselton laboratory members attended and presented at the conference.

October 11-14, 2023 – Four graduate students presented at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA.

September 1, 2023 – Graduate student, David Evans, published his first author research paper entitled A safer framework to evaluate characterization technologies of exhaled biologic materials using electrospun nanofibers in Nanoscale.

August 3, 2023 – Undergraduate Researcher, Daniel Liu, presented his poster entitled Low-Cost Electronics for Portable, Self-Contained, Triage Testing of Tuberculosis at the Point of Care at the Systems Biology and Bioengineering Undergraduate Research Experience (SyBURRE) Symposium.

Undergraduate researcher, Logan Tsukiyama, presented her poster entitled High Resolution Melt Analysis Using an Internal Calibrator: Application to Tuberculosis Drug Resistance at the Vanderbilt Summer Science Academy (VSSA) Summer Symposium.

Undergraduate researcher, Charlotte Williams, presented her poster entitled Detection of Fragmented Tuberculosis DNA in Urine at the 12th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium.

February 22, 2023 – Doctoral student, Emily Kight, successfully defended her dissertation entitled Advancements in point-of-care diagnostic assays for non-invasive samples in resource-constrained settings.

January 18, 2023 –  Graduate student, Dalton Nelson, was invited to present his paper Ligation-based assay for variant typing without sequencing: Application to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control Laboratory Network.

December 12, 2022 – Graduate student, Dalton Nelson, published his first author research paper entitled Ligation-based assay for variant typing without sequencing: Application to SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in Influenza and other respiratory viruses.

October 12-15 2022 – Two graduate students and three undergraduate students presented at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX.

Undergraduate researcher, Rosana Alfaro, presented her poster entitled Swellable microneedles for direct capture and early detection of Lyme disease spirochetes in skin at the BMES annual meeting.

Graduate researcher, Emily Kight, presented her poster entitled Tuberculosis PCR detection by amplicon reconstruction of urinary DNA fragments at the BMES annual meeting.

Graduate researcher, Dalton Nelson, presented his poster entitled Ligation-based assay for SARS-CoV-2 variant screening at the BMES annual meeting.

Undergraduate researcher, Hannah Stepp, presented her poster entitled Optimization of non-enzymatic dumbbell DNA-based assay decreases processing time for Schistosomiasis diagnosis at the BMES annual meeting.

October 2, 2022 – Graduate student, Emily Kight, published her first author research paper entitled Direct capture and early detection of Lyme disease spirochete in skin with a microneedle patch in Biosensors.

September 8, 2022 – Three undergraduate researchers presented their summer research at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Summer Research Program poster session.

Undergraduate researcher, Rosana Alfaro presented her poster entitled Swellable microneedles for direct capture and early detection of Lyme disease spirochetes in the skin at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Summer Research Symposium.

Undergraduate researcher, Kunal Chugh presented his poster entitled Low-cost system design for a PCR instrument at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Summer Research Symposium.

Undergraduate researcher, Marin Schiffman presented her poster entitled Primer selection for use in PCR-based tuberculosis diagnostics at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Summer Research Symposium.

Undergraduate researcher, Emma Wheat presented her poster entitled Food System Monitoring: Towards a field-deployable swine 3-plex PCR assay for differentiation of Foot and Mouth Disease Virus from Senecavirus A at the Vanderbilt University Undergraduate Research Fair.

August 12, 2022 – Our collaborator, Dr. Bill Gabella presented Death by Blackhole and Wormholes: The Ones You Can Use to Travel Through Space & Time at the Way Late  Play Date: Boldly Go Beyond event at the Adventure Science Center.

August 1-4, 2022 – Graduate student, Emily Kight, presented her poster entitled  Tuberculosis PCR detection by amplicon reconstruction of urinary DNA fragments at the Research Reboot of Tuberculosis on the Keystone Symposia 50th Anniversary in Beaver Run Resort, Colorado.

July 11, 2022 – Recent graduate and former undergraduate researcher, Christia Victoriano published her first author paper entitled Direct PCR with CDC 2019 SARS-CoV-2 assay: optimization for limited-resource settings in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

February 8, 2022 – Graduate student, Dalton Nelson published his first author paper entitled Magnetic bead processing enables sensitive ligation-based detection of HIV drug resistance mutations in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

December 14, 2021 – Doctoral student, Stephanie Pearlman successfully defended her dissertation entitled Improving TB diagnostics for use in low-resource settings.

November 21, 2021 – Graduate Student, Stephanie Pearlman published her first author paper entitled Controlling Droplet Marangoni Flows to Improve Microscopic-Based TB Diagnosis in Diagnostics.

November 9, 2021 – Graduate Student, Emily Kight published her first author paper entitled Recurrence monitoring for ovarian cancer using a cell phone-integrated paper device to measure the ovarian cancer biomarker HE4/CRE ratio in urine in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

September 30, 2021 – Recent graduates, Dr. Zackary Zimmers and Alex Boyd in collaboration with Hannah Stepp, Drs. Nicholas Adams and Rick Haselton published a paper in Micromachines entitled Development of an Automated, Non-Enzymatic Nucleic Acid Amplification Test.

September 15, 2021 – Recent graduate, Dr. Zackary Zimmers in collaboration with Drs. Nicholas Adams and Rick Haselton published a paper in Biosensors and Bioelectronics entitled Addition of mirror-image L-DNA elements to DNA amplification circuits to distinguish leakage from target signal.

September 9, 2021 – Three undergraduate researchers presented their summer research at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Summer Research Program poster session.

Undergraduate researcher, Hannah Stepp presented her research entitled Automated Cyclical Hybridization of Dumbbell DNA Facilitates Non-Enzymatic, Low-Resource Detection of Schistosomiasis

Undergraduate researcher, Emma Wheat presented her research entitled Multiplex Assay to Detect Seneca Virus A and Foot and Mouth Disease Virus without RNA Extraction using Adaptive RT-PCR.

August 31, 2021 – Doctoral student, Zackary Zimmers successfully defended his dissertation entitled Advancements in Non-Enzymatic Nucleic Acid Diagnostics for Point-of-Care Testing Using Enantiomeric Left-Handed DNA.

October 13, 2020 – Our recently funded NIH grant was featured in a Vanderbilt School of Engineering press release entitled Team receives $4 million NIH grant for rapid test of COVID-19, other respiratory infections

July 29, 2020 – Our recent COVID-19 paper was featured in the Vanderbilt Research News in a press release entitled Streamlined diagnostic approach to COVID-19 can avoid potential testing logjam.

July 14, 2020 – Graduate Student, Emily Kight’s bacteria photo was featured in ATCC’s “Credible Content Incredible Images” photo contest. Below is her picture of uropathogenic E. coli which differs in its expression of a protein called curli.

June 26, 2020 – Graduate Student, Stephanie Pearlman was featured in the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (ViNSE) Spotlight Podcast Episode 8 to discuss her recent publication.

June 23, 2020 – Research Assistant Professors Nick Adams and Mindy Leelawong in collaboration with Dr. Jonathan Schmitz, the Medical Director of the VUMC Molecular Infectious Diseases Laboratory published a paper on the ability to perform testing on unextracted COVID-19 nasopharyngeal samples. Their paper COVID-19 diagnostics for resource-limited settings: Evaluation of “unextracted” qRT-PCR was published in the Journal of Medical Virology.

February 10, 2020 – Graduate Student, Stephanie Pearlman published her first author paper entitled Low-Resource Nucleic Acid Extraction Method Enabled by High-Gradient Magnetic Separation in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

October 19, 2019 – Undergraduate researcher, Dalton Nelson presented his poster entitled Magnetic bead transfer fuses high-specificity and high-sensitivity enzymatic reactions enabling low-resource detection of HIV drug resistance mutations at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

October 19, 2019 – Undergraduate researcher, Christia Victoriano presented her poster entitled Influenza detection without RNA extraction using Adaptive RT-PCR at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

October 17, 2019 – Graduate student, Stephanie Pearlman presented her research in an oral presentation entitled Low-resource nucleic acid extraction device based on high-gradient magnetic separation at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

October 17, 2019 – Graduate student, Zackary Zimmers, presented his poster entitled Fluorophore-quencher interactions effect on hybridization of complementary oligonucleotides at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

October 2019 – Mindy Leelawong, Stephanie Pearlman, Rick Haselton, and Zack Zimmers enjoyed a night on the town after attending the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

September 19, 2019 – Undergraduate Researcher, Christia Victoriano, presented her poster entitled Point-of-care influenza diagnosis using adaptive RT-PCR at the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Symposium.

July 3, 2019 – Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Mindy Leelawong was featured in Outbreak News Interviews. Check it out here

June 14, 2019 – Graduate student, Zack Zimmers, published his first author paper entitled Fluorophore-Quencher Interactions Effect on Hybridization Characteristics of Complementary Oligonucleotides in the Journal Analytical Methods.

June 12, 2019 – The new Haselton Laboratory publication was featured in Research News @ Vanderbilt, Quick DNA test for malaria drug resistance is life-saver, holds promise for other diseases and at Elsevier, New assay detects patients’ resistance to antimalarial drugs from a drop of blood. Authors include: Leelawong M, Adams, NM, Gabella WE, Wright DW, Haselton FR.

May 14, 2019 – Research Assistant Professor, Nick Adams received 1st place at the Vanderbilt University Employee Appreciation Picnic’s Art Contest for his Doodling Elvis by GPS-Tracking a contiguous 100 mile bike ride through the streets of Music City: Strava Activity Post, Video of GPS tracked path, USA Today article. 

May 14, 2019 – Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Thomas Scherr, received 2nd place in the baking competition for his Praline Envie in the candy category at the Vanderbilt University Employee Picnic.

February 25, 2019 – Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Mindy Leelawong, presented her poster Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Discrimination for Antimalarial Drug Resistance Testing Directly in Blood at the Vanderbilt University Global Health Symposium.

February 25, 2019 – Graduate student, Zack Zimmers, presented his poster Design of a Nucleic Acid Based Optical Signal for Adaptive PCR Detection of Malaria at the Vanderbilt University Global Health Symposium.

February 25, 2019 – Undergraduate researcher Christia Victoriano, presented her poster Adaptive RT-PCR using Fluorescent L-DNAs for Detecting Influenza Virus with No Sample Preparation at the Vanderbilt University Global Health Symposium.

February 25, 2019 – Undergraduate researcher, Anna Wolfe, presented her poster Development of a Low-Resource Nucleic Acid Extraction Device Based on High-Gradient Magnetic Separation at the Vanderbilt University Global Health Symposium.

October 19, 2018 – Graduate student, Stephanie Pearlman attended the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting in Atlanta, GA to present her poster  Design of a High-Gradient Magnetic Separator for Improved TB Diagnosis in the “Micro/Nano Tools for Infectious Disease” section.

October 19, 2018 – Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Mindy Leelawong attended the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting in Atlanta, GA to present her poster Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Discrimination for Antimalarial Drug Resistance Testing Directly from Blood.

October 19, 2018 – Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Nicholas Adams attended the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting in Atlanta, GA to present his poster Direct Nucleic Acid Amplification from Urine with Adaptive PCR.

September 6, 2018 – Undergraduate researcher, Christia Victoriano, presented her research at the annual Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Summer Research Program poster session. Her poster was entitled: Designing a negative-feedback loop to enable quantitative diagnostic PCR in low-resource settings.

Summer 2018 – Dr. Rick Haselton and Dr. Megan Pask of the Haselton Laboratory in collaboration with Dr. Muktar Aliyu and Dr. William Wester at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were awarded a Discovery Grant for their proposal: HIV Point-of-Care Testing Appropriate for Antenatal Clinics in Nigeria. It along with the other engineering proposals were features in this article.

August 3, 2017 – Undergraduate researcher, Sara Shaghaghi, presented at Vanderbilt University Summer Science Academy’s 15th Annual Research Symposium. Her poster was entitled: Towards a 100-fold more sensitive TB diagnostic based on the coffee ring phenomenon.

April 19, 2017 – Undergraduate researcher, Anna Wolfe, presented her research at the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Fair. Her poster was entitled: Design of a Point-of-Care Assay to Quantify Thyroid Stimulating Hormone

January 13, 2017 – The new Haselton Laboratory publication was featured in GE reports The 5 Coolest Things on Earth This Week.

January 11, 2017 – The new Haselton Laboratory publication was featured in Research News @ Vanderbilt, DNA duplicator small enough to hold in your hand. Authors include: Adams NM, Gabella WE, Hardcastle AN, and Haselton FR.

December 7, 2016 – The Haselton Laboratory had the paper entitled Adaptive PCR Based on Hybridization Sensing of Mirror-Image L-DNA published by the Analytical Chemistry journal. Authors include: Adams NM, Gabella WE, Hardcastle AN, and Haselton FR.

December 2, 2016 – Three Haselton Laboratory undergraduate researchers presented their research.

Austin Hardcastle presents his poster entitled Adaptive PCR Enables Direct Detection of Pathogen Nucleic Acid Biomarkers in Urine

Cassandra Wessely presents her poster entitled High Gradient Magnetic Separator for Biomarker Concentration From Large Volumes.

Erin Euliano presents her poster entitled Dynamically Controlled RT-PCR Enables Adaptive Thermal Cycling.

October 8, 2016 – Research Assistant Professor, Nick Adams presented his research at the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN. His poster was entitled: Dynamically Controlled PCR Based on Direct Monitoring of Primer Target Hybridization States.

Graduate Student Researcher, Mike Jacobs also presented a poster entitled: Detection Signal Amplification based on Cyclic Catch-and-Release.

Undergraduate Researcher, Austin Hardcastle also presented his research at the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN.

September 1, 2016 – Three undergraduate researchers presented their research in the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Poster Session.

Nicholas Diehl, Cassandra Wessely, and Sparsh Gupta present their summer research projects at the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering poster session.

Nicholas Diehl presented his poster entitled Construction of Flow Focusing Device for Encapsulation of Single Lymphocytes at Ultra-High Throughput.

Sparsh Gupta presented his poster entitled Barcode Embedded RDT for Improved Quality Control in Malaria Surveillance.

Cassandra Wessely presented her research entitled High Gradient Magnetic Separator for Biomarker Concentration from Large Volumes.

August 3, 2016 – Undergraduate researcher, Austin Hardcastle, presented his summer research project for the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program. His talk was titled: How to Harness a Parallel Biological University to Diagnose Malaria: Adaptive PCR Enables Detection of Nucleic Acid Biomarkers in Urine without Sample Preparation.

June 6, 2016 – The Haselton Laboratory had the paper entitled Mobile phone imaging and cloud-based analysis for standardized malaria detection and reporting accepted for publication by the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Authors include: Scherr TF, Gupta S, Wright DW, Haselton FR.

June 1, 2016 – Postdoctoral Fellow, Thomas Scherr was awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund 2016 Collaborative Research Travel Grant to work on his project “Mobile phones for objective malaria diagnosis and rapid reporting.”

April 27, 2016 – Undergraduate researcher Hayley Ryskoski along with her team (Maria Linn, Courtney Mason, Chase Mu and Nicholas Blair) won the 2016 AT&T Innovation Award at this year’s School of Engineering’s Design Day.

April 26, 2016 – Postdoctoral Fellow, Thomas Scherr has been named a 2016 Mobile Health Training Institute Scholar. He will attend a training session from August 8-12, 2016 at UCLA, Los Angeles, California.

October 8, 2015 – Postdoctoral Fellow, Thomas Scherr, presented a talk entitled Characterization of Magnetic-Based Biomarker Extraction for Lateral Flow Assay Enhancement at the Medical Diagnostics and Screening II Session of the BMES Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida.

September 3, 2015 – Undergraduate researcher, Austin, was featured in this article for his summer research in the Haselton Laboratory. He accomplished a lot over the summer and has continued that research this fall.

May 28, 2015 – Nick Adams & Rick Haselton presented an application of one of our technologies at the Targeting Ebola International Congress 2015 in Paris, France. Their poster entitled “Development of a user-focused assay for Ebola virus sample collection and detection.”

March 27, 2015 – Congratulations to Aditya, an undergraduate researcher in the Haselton Laboratory since 2012! He has received acceptances from both Harvard Medical School and Stanford School of Medicine. Now he has a tough choice to make, but we know he is up to the challenge!

February 10, 2015 – South African colleague, Sriram Krishnan, visits to discuss future diagnostic technology collaborations.

January 22, 2015 – Thomas Scherr, postdoctoral fellow in the Haselton Laboratory received the Charles E. Coates Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2014 presented on behalf of the Louisiana State University Graduate School and the Charles E. Coates Fund.