Lourdes Rivas Torcates

Dr. Lourdes Rivas Torcates earned her Bachelor degree in Chemistry at Central University of Venezuela (2007) and Master degree in Catalysis at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona (Spain) in 2009. Received her PhD degree in Chemistry at Autonomous University of Barcelona, under the supervision of Prof. Arben Merkoçi (2015). During her predoctoral studies, worked in different strategies to improve the performance of nanoparticle-based biosensing platforms for point-of-care applications (electrochemical sensors and lateral flow assays). After completing her PhD, Dr. Rivas Torcates accepted a Postdoctoral position at the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) to work in the development of low-cost biosensors based on microarray technologies for clinical applications.
She has recently joined the Nanobioengineering group at IBEC to develop an integrated microfluidic platform for early stroke identification.

Group: Nanobioengineering
Supervisor: Josep Samitier
Project: Integrated microfluidic platform for early stroke identification

Stroke is one of the leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide. Its diagnostic, apart from clinical history and physical examination, is based on expensive and time-consuming techniques that are not available in all health care centers. Thus, there is a need of new technologies that allow a rapid and specific diagnostic of stroke to increase the medical treatment success and patient survival rates. The aim of the present project is to develop a sensitive and specific multiplexed point-of-care platform for rapid detection of stroke biomarkers based on an integrated microfluidic chip with electrochemical detection.