ECOLOGICAL GENETICS & CONSERVATION

My research focuses on the development of Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) devices for molecular biology applications. LOC devices enable conventional laboratory processes to be miniaturised which offers numerous advantages including: reduced sample/reagent consumption, reduced waste and increased speed of analysis. The ability to integrate multiple techniques on polymer or paper LOC devices, which are manufactured in-house, creates ‘sample in-answer out’ systems which can be used by non-specialists at the point-of-need. My current research looks at applying these LOC devices in areas such as forensic analysis, clinical diagnostics and conservation genetics.