Andrea Armani

Andrea Martin Armani is the Ray Irani Chair in Engineering and Materials Science and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She was awarded the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from Barack Obama and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

Andrea Armani
Alma materCalifornia Institute of Technology
University of Chicago
AwardsWorld Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2015)
PECASE (2010)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Southern California

Early life and education

Armani is from Memphis, Tennessee.[1] She attended the St. Mary's Episcopal School and graduated in 1996.[2] She was described by her school as being a "Renaissance woman", took part in Model United Nations and played the flute.[2] She studied physics at the University of Chicago, graduating in 2001.[2] She was the only girl in her physics class.[2] She moved to the California Institute of Technology for her doctoral studies, majoring in applied physics with a minor in biology.[3] From 2006 to 2008 Armani served as a Clare Boothe Luce postdoctoral researcher in biology and chemical engineering at CalTech.[4] Her advisors were Scott E. Fraser and Richard Flagan.[1] While there she worked on single-molecule detection, using a silica surface that is functionalised to bind a target molecule.[5][6]

Career and research

Armani is interested in nonlinear materials and integrated optical devices, which are used in everything from diagnostics to telecommunications.[7] When she was offered her position at University of Southern California, she delivered a hand-written acceptance letter to Yannis C. Yortsos.[8] She is Director of the W. M. Keck Photonics Cleanroom and John D. O’Brien Nanofabrication Laboratory.[7] From 2010–2017, she was the Fluor Early Career Chair of Engineering, and in 2017, she was appointed the Ray Irani Chair in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.[9] She has appointments in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemistry.

Her research group is highly interdisciplinary, working from the fundamentals of material discovery and optics to applications in integrated optics and diagnostics. She used gold nanoparticles to create low power frequency combs, which can be used as high precision light sources in fields such as cybersecurity, chemical sensing and GPS.[10] The gold nanoparticles increase the light that circulates in the device, allowing the microlaser to operate at a range of wavelengths at high intensity.[11][12] She also works on hybrid organic-inorganic photonics which combine organic materials with conventional integrated photonic devices.[13] In this work, she invented several new organic small molecules to improve optical device performance for Raman lasers and frequency comb generation.[14] She invented a photo-responsive material and created a flexible indicator from a tri-layer polymer-based device, which changes colour when exposed to UV light.[13][15] The colour change is due to the polymer irreversibly cleaving when exposed to UV-light. This device could be used in preventive healthcare to protect against skin cancer.[16][10] She was supported by the Office of Naval Research to develop an interferometric optical biosensor.[17] The proposed biosensor is able to detect DNA and bacteria.[17] She developed a high-resolution polarimetric elastography instrument to characterise the mechanical properties of visco-elastic materials.[18][19] This has been used to study the extracellular matrix in pancreatic tissue and porcine tissue.[20][21]

Armani is interested in using optical devices for epigenetic investigations, and has developed a label-free sensor that can detect and quantify DNA methylation.[22] The sensor incorporates a rare-earth element optical cavity to form a nanolaser.[22] The heterodyned nanolaser sensors can be used to diagnose ovarian cancer as they are sensitive to RASSF1A and BRCA1 promoters.[22] They compliment their experimental work with finite element method and finite-difference time-domain method modelling.[3] In 2018 she announced a portable malaria screening device that can be used for rapid screening.[23][24] The device uses a 633nm laser to study hemozoin, a magnetic insoluble nanocrystal that forms when heme aggregates.[23] The hemozoin nanoparticles strongly scatter light and can be moved using a magnet, which allows them to be identified by monitoring the intensity of light that passes through a sample.[23]

Her lab group are not only involved with research, but actively engaged with the community, running engineering festivals, lab parties and sports days.[25][26] Armani is a Fellow of SPIE and OSA, and has been a Visiting Lecturer of both societies since in 2009.[13] She is the faculty advisor for the student chapters of SPIE and Optical Society at USC.[4] She spent 2015 on sabbatical as a Northrop Grumman faculty fellow.[4]

Awards and honors

Armani is a Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering and The Optical Society.[8]

References

  1. "Andrea Armani". EngineerGirl. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  2. "St Mary's Episcopal School" (PDF). St Mary's School. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  3. "USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - Viterbi Faculty Directory". viterbi.usc.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  4. "Biosketch – Armani Research Lab". armani.usc.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-21.
  5. Armani, Andrea M.; Fraser, Scott E. (2008-02-07). Enderlein, Jörg; Gryczynski, Zygmunt K; Erdmann, Rainer (eds.). "Label-free detection of cytokines using optical microcavities" (PDF). Single Molecule Spectroscopy and Imaging. 6862: 68620C. Bibcode:2008SPIE.6862E..0CA. doi:10.1117/12.761002. S2CID 121878145.
  6. "Caltech Scientists Create Breakthrough Sensor Capable of Detecting Individual Molecules | Caltech". The California Institute of Technology. 2007-05-07. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  7. "News | FFNT Inspirational Lunch Discussion with Andrea Armani January 17 | University of Twente - Enschede". Universiteit Twente. 2017-12-14. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  8. Rheagan Rizio (2018-02-26). "Andrea Armani Named Inaugural Holder of the Ray R. Irani Chair in Engineering". USC Viterbi | School of Engineering. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  9. Eric Mankin (2010-11-08). "USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - Two Young Viterbi Professors Awarded Top U.S. Junior Faculty Honor in Science and Engineering". viterbi.usc.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  10. "Orange Alert". USC Viterbi | Magazine. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  11. "A Dash of Gold Improves Microlasers". USC Viterbi | School of Engineering. 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  12. Castro-Beltrán, Rigoberto; Diep, Vinh M.; Soltani, Soheil; Gungor, Eda; Armani, Andrea M. (2017-11-15). "Plasmonically Enhanced Kerr Frequency Combs". ACS Photonics. 4 (11): 2828–2834. doi:10.1021/acsphotonics.7b00808.
  13. "Andrea Armani | SPIE Homepage: SPIE". spie.org. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  14. "Pulses of Light to Encrypt Data and Protect Security of Cryptocurrencies". USC Viterbi | School of Engineering. 2018-01-11. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  15. Lee, Michele E.; Armani, Andrea M. (2016-10-28). "Flexible UV Exposure Sensor Based on UV Responsive Polymer". ACS Sensors. 1 (10): 1251–1255. doi:10.1021/acssensors.6b00491.
  16. "Optical Materials for Preventative Medicine | UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry". www.chemistry.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  17. Diane Ainsworth. "USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - Andrea Armani Receives Young Investigator Award". viterbi.usc.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  18. Armani, Andrea M.; Hudnut, Alexa W. (2018-02-19). High-resolution optical polarimetric elastography for measuring the mechanical properties of tissue. Optical Elastography and Tissue Biomechanics V. 10496. International Society for Optics and Photonics. p. 6. Bibcode:2018SPIE10496E..06H. doi:10.1117/12.2285443. ISBN 9781510614772. S2CID 139266255.
  19. Armani, Andrea M.; Hudnut, Alexa W. (2017). "High-resolution analysis of the mechanical behavior of tissue". Applied Physics Letters. 114 (24): 243701. Bibcode:2017ApPhL.110x3701H. doi:10.1063/1.4985709.
  20. Hudnut, Alexa W.; Lash-Rosenberg, Lian; Xin, An; Leal Doblado, Juan A.; Zurita-Lopez, Cecilia; Wang, Qiming; Armani, Andrea M. (2018-05-14). "Role of Extracellular Matrix in the Biomechanical Behavior of Pancreatic Tissue". ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering. 4 (5): 1916–1923. doi:10.1021/acsbiomaterials.8b00349. PMC 6905626. PMID 31828218.
  21. Armani, Andrea M.; Mumenthaler, Shannon M.; Larson, Brent K.; Liu, Sonya; Babaei, Behzad; Hudnut, Alexa W. (2017-10-01). "Characterization of the mechanical properties of resected porcine organ tissue using optical fiber photoelastic polarimetry". Biomedical Optics Express. 8 (10): 4663–4670. doi:10.1364/BOE.8.004663. ISSN 2156-7085. OCLC 857654692. PMC 5654808. PMID 29082093.
  22. "Project Information - NIH RePORTER - NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results". projectreporter.nih.gov. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  23. "Engineers Develop New Portable Malaria Screening Instrument". USC Viterbi | School of Engineering. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  24. McBirney, Samantha E.; Chen, Dongyu; Scholtz, Alexis; Chen, Bernard; Armani, Andrea M. (2018). Portable Diagnostic for Malaria Detection in Low-Resource Settings. Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics. Washington, D.C.: OSA. doi:10.1364/cleo_at.2018.atu4j.4. ISBN 9781943580422. S2CID 51972096.
  25. Jane Keranen (2018-03-20). "EngX brings over 1000 participants to campus". Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  26. "Lab Traditions – Armani Research Lab". armani.usc.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  27. "SPIE Senior Member Andrea Armani of USC named a Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum". spie.org. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  28. "News: ONR-Sponsored Scientist Named One of Popular Science's 'Brilliant 10'- Office of Naval Research". www.onr.navy.mil. 2013-10-17. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  29. Velez, Natalia (2015-09-23). "Engineering professors among the Popular Science 'Brilliant 10'". USC News. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  30. "NAE Awards The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grants for Advancement of Interdisciplinary Research". NAE Website. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  31. "VSOE Research Award". USC Viterbi | School of Engineering. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  32. "News: Eight ONR-funded Scientists Among Those Recognized by U.S. President - Office of Naval Research". www.onr.navy.mil. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  33. "President Honors Outstanding Early-Career Scientists". The White House. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  34. "NIH Director's New Innovator Award - Funded Research". commonfund.nih.gov. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  35. "Mellon Mentoring Award". USC Viterbi | School of Engineering. Retrieved 2018-12-21.
  36. "Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) Search Awards". cdmrp.army.mil. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  37. "Innovator Under 35: Andrea Armani, 31". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  38. "2009 Young Investigators - Department of Research - Office of Naval Research". www.onr.navy.mil. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
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