Diqing's poster titled “Giant Magnetoresistance Based Handheld Platform for Rapid Detection of Influenza A Virus” has received the Best Poster Award in her poster session with over 100 posters in total. The MMM conference is held in Pittsburgh, US this year, and has attracted researchers from all over the world for the discussion of a variety of topics on magnetism and magnetic materials.

Diqing and her coworkers from Prof. Jian-Ping Wang and Prof. Andres Perez’s groups demonstrated the outstanding performance of their GMR-based handheld system in the sensitive detection of Influenza A virus. By using a sandwich structure of capture antibody-antigen-detection antibody-magnetic nanoparticles on the GMR sensor surface, the detecting system can successfully detect both Influenza A Virus nucleoprotein and the purified H3N2 virus sample with a detection limit better than the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), which is a commonly used method for the virus detection. Moreover, with the size of a snack container and a user-friendly interface, this handheld system is capable of onsite detection, and the whole detection process can be finished within 10 minutes.

(More details on the handheld system can be had in the Z-Lab story)