At a technical university of Berlin, Polish-born Monika Weber was the only woman in her electrical engineering class. Today, the Yale Ph.D. candidate is blazing a trail in bioelectronics with a product she thinks can change the world.
Weber is the founder of Yale University-startup called Fluid-Screen, which has developed the world’s first portable biosensor capable of detecting bacteria in water and blood, quickly and cheaply.
The device will be tested on Hudson River water this spring, when Fluid-Screen teams up with Riverkeeper, a New York-based advocacy group.
“We are very excited about our partnership with Riverkeeper,” Weber said. “Our first goal with Fluid-Screen is water testing. Our intention is to start with one application and perfect that before we move on to others. But after, we’d like to take the product globally.”
The Fluid-Screen device — about the size of a quarter — uses ultra tiny “nanosensors” capable of detecting low concentrations of biomolecules, or disease markers, in water and blood in less than 30 minutes.
The technology, which is awaiting a patent, is based on a silicon biosensor chip developed at Yale under the guidance of Prof. Mark A. Reed, a physicist and associate director of the university’s Institute of Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering.
“[Fluid-Screen] is targeted for detecting pathogens in water for quality screening, and for blood for bacterial infection,” Reed said. “Existing methods either take too long — 24 hours or more — or are too expensive and not portable. Fluid-Screen’s goal is to make it quick and inexpensive.
“Monika headed a student design team that did the initial conceptualization for a class,” Reed added. “She then went on to push the technology forward [and] entered the concept into student design and business development competitions, with considerable success.”
Indeed, Weber and Fluid-Screen have been making headlines, securing a $50,000 award from MassChallenge, an international competition that awards more than $1 million annually to startups — with no strings attached. The Yale company also was awarded the grand prize in the Create the Future NASA Design contest, and has earned other recognitions.
Weber said Fluid-Screen has received more than $340,000 in start-up funds. The company has an office on the Yale campus, as well as Cambridge, Mass.
“Monika has tremendous drive and enthusiasm, and the company would not have been formed without her,” Reed added.
Weber, 31, said her first love was mathematics. Her father is a physicist and her mother is an economist. Before coming to Yale in 2009, Weber studied mathematics at University of Wroclaw in Poland and physics at Freie Universitat in Berlin. She also studied electrical engineering at Berlin’s Technische Universitat.
“Yale is just an amazing environment,” Weber said. “I am so lucky to work with some of the greatest minds anywhere.”
Weber’s Fluid-Screen biosensor comes out of decades of research at Yale in nanoscience, the miniaturization of microchip electronic devices. She said the device will speed up bacteria identification remarkably.
“Essentially, we’ve replaced the petri dish with a smartphone,” said Weber who will complete her doctoral dissertation at Yale this spring.
Weber said the screening device is simple to use and portable. Each test costs $1, the price of the disposable microchip. “It should look something like a smartphone,” she said.
But behind this sleek, hand-held device is cutting-edge nanoscience. Fluid-Screen uses a phenomenon known as dielectrophoresis, whereby the electrical charges on red and white blood cells as well as the bacteria themselves are separated. The goal is the detection of several hundred individual bacteria types, she said.
“Once we perfect the device with water testing, we intend to move on to other applications, such as blood and urine testing,” Weber said.
She said the Fluid-Screen scanner eventually could be standard equipment in hospitals to test for staff infections. Testing for food-borne pathogens is another important application, she said.
Weber said she never envisioned working in the field of bacteria testing. Nevertheless, she said she is proud to be a role model for women in the male-dominated world of physics and engineering.
“What I always found exciting was using cutting edge technology to solve important problems,” she said. “I think the mission of a company is important. I’m proud to do work that’s makes a difference.”
Weber said a device incorporating the Fluid-Screen technology has been prototyped, and the first commercially manufactured units will be available to test in September this year.
