Chenyu Wen has received a postdoctoral project from The Swedish Research Council.

Chenyu Wen has received a postdoctoral project from The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) in Spring 2020, with the title Transport of Ions and Molecules in Nanoscale Channels for Protein Analysis – TIMPANI. This project is based on Prof. Shi-Li Zhang’s group at the Division of Solid-State Electronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, Uppsala University (UU), and the host is Prof. Martin Z. Bazant at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This project has three years in time span, which is planned to be implemented in the host group at MIT for the first two years and in the home group at UU for the last one year.

Ions and molecules in nanoscale channels exhibit extraordinary properties compared to those in bulk solutions. Based on the transport of large molecules, nanopore sensing technology is an easy and low-cost approach to detect single molecule behavior, promising for protein profiling. This project will examine the physical mechanisms of transport process in extreme nanoconfinement, where the classical theories fail, with special focus on electrokinetics and hydrodynamics. The new physical insights will guide the development of a set of new methodologies of nanopore technology for device design, measurement implementation, and data analysis. Based on the new methodology, the nanopore protein profiling will be significantly promoted not only in the perspective of devices fabrication and characterization, but also from the signal processing strategy and data analysis algorithm. The unique advantage of this project lies in its intimate connection between theory and experiment. This project will deepen our understanding of the transport process and improve our projection of nanopore protein profiling.

This project possesses a similar idea with Chenyu’s other postdoctoral project granted by The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. According to the policies of both The Swedish Research Council and The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Chenyu has to select only one of these two projects and abandon the other. Therefore, after a comprehensive consideration, Chenyu has abandoned this project.