Prof. Ayyappasamy Sudalaiyadum Perumal

Areas of interest: 

Interdisciplinary research has found novel and intuitive ways to repurpose biological systems for cutting-edge applications and answer fundamental questions in science. Trained as a molecular microbiologist in transcription biology, my research at McGill focused on understanding the motility behaviour of microorganisms in confined artificial geometries for developing non-conventional computing approaches. We prototyped a microfluidic device to explore solutions to NP-complete problems in polynomial time. Since this proof-of-concept work, I have developed a taste for bridging biological systems to engineering technologies at various micro-and nano scales. Another example is the integration of biomolecules on engineered nanosurfaces, such as nanostructures and nanoparticles, for applications in biosensing and diagnosis. This has also led to a fundamental understanding of how biological systems respond to these artificial surfaces, which could be relevant to developing micro-nano interfaces.

Currently, I am actively researching two areas –

A. Gas embolism: to develop a biomedical device to investigate the genesis, evolution and prognosis of gas embolism under systemic pressure variations (in collaboration with Prof. Dan Nicolau's team).

B. RNA biologics: Microfluidics for in vitro RNA synthesis and lipid encapsulation applications in biologics (in collaboration with Prof. Amine Kamen's team).

Research areas:

· Non-conventional computation using microorganisms

· Traffic simulation using microorganisms (biosimulation)

· Nanobiosurfaces, biomolecules and biological responses

· Transcription biology and microfluidics for RNA biologics (in vitro transcription and encapsulation)