Xi Wei

Biography

Xi Wei, PhD candidate

MSc in Biomedical Engineering, Polytechnic School of Engineering, New York University, New York, US
BSc in Biopharmaceutical Science. China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China
Email: xi.wei@nyu.edu


Xi joined Dr. Song’s research team in NYUAD in 2013. Her research topic is focused on point-of-care diagnostics. The success of a potential shift from curative medicine, to predictive, personalized, and preemptive medicine could rely on the development of portable diagnostic and monitoring devices for point-of-care testing. Xi worked as a research scientist at the College of Dentistry at New York University in New York from 2010-2013.

Xi’s current project is to develop an electrokinetic concentrator in a microfluidic chip format that will increase the DNA or RNA sample concentration locally at the site of detection and thus, enable fast and sensitive detection of low-abundant sequences without PCR. By using a concentrator-enhanced microarray platform, clinicians will be able to identify new genes and complex mutations in disease-causing human genes at unprecedented sensitivity. In addition, the proposed work can easily be extended to other types of assays such as immunoassays and other highly multiplexed biosensors. Once fully developed, the concentrator-enhanced microarray device will become an indispensable low-cost, point-of-care diagnostic tool.