The Food·Nanosystems Engineering Laboratory develops food safety diagnostics that use the color change of gold nanoparticles, read by the eye without a dedicated reader.
To carry these signals from the bench to real foods and the field, we also work on sample preparation, data analysis, and food safety management systems — so that food safety information belongs not only to institutions, but to everyone.
Select a paper under each area to read the original article.
Antibody-based bifunctional linkers control the aggregation of gold nanoparticles, so that bacteria and proteins are detected by a color change seen by eye, without a dedicated reader. We have also studied how particle size and number can be tuned to adjust sensitivity and speed.
Very small materials such as gold nanoparticles produce distinctive colors when they meet light (localized surface plasmon resonance). Two reviews summarize how this nanotechnology is used to assess food quality and safety, and how far gold nanoparticle colorimetric biosensing has come in detecting foodborne pathogens.
Food debris blurs the signal. A filter-based sample preparation of under 3 min removes food residues and keeps only the bacteria; combined with the color signal, it allows detection in real foods such as vegetables, meat, and cheese brine.
We develop formats for on-site use, such as label-free aptamer–gold nanoparticle sensors and dot-patterned lateral flow assays, and use machine learning and image analysis to support the interpretation of biosensor signals.
We add functional ingredients such as red yeast rice, duckweed, and hydrangea leaf extract powders to rice cookies, baekseolgi, and muffins, and evaluate how antioxidant activity (total polyphenols and radical scavenging) and quality characteristics (color, moisture, volume, and sensory attributes) change, to find addition levels that keep both function and taste. We also analyze the meringue and cookie quality of protein ingredients that replace egg white, and the volatile compounds of drinking water and kimchi cabbage.
Keeping pace with the growth of novel foods, we compare global regulations to design prevention-centered safety management (extended HACCP), and study the dissemination of food safety technologies built on new technologies.
As postdoctoral research, the PI studied supercooling preservation, which uses electric and magnetic fields to keep foods below 0 °C without freezing.
