The Charger Blog
Competing against students from Yale University and other New England universities, May Thuzar Maung, a biomedical engineering graduate student, won the Connecticut Microelectronic and Optoelectronic Consortium Best Poster Award for her research on the development of a quick test that could help doctors detect infectious diseases within minutes.
May 15, 2019
As a doctor in her native Myanmar, May Thuzar Maung ’19 M.S. knew all too well about the devastation that comes from infectious diseases and the difficulties that arise in treating them.
"In my country, critical cases of viral infections like Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, caused by the Dengue virus, are prevalent among children," Maung says. "Most of the severe cases are due to the delayed diagnosis of the disease because the symptoms are very similar to the common cold. So early detection is crucial."
Maung, a graduate student in biomedical engineering, wanted to find a way to thwart infectious diseases by focusing on their diagnosis. She was selected for an internship at 12-15 Molecular Diagnostics LLC, a Branford-based start-up that is trying to develop a quick diagnosis for viral infections – similar to the quick strep test – which could revolutionize infectious disease diagnosis.
"This kind of quick and early diagnosis could help to prevent people from suffering the complications of a disease."May Thuzar Maung ’19 M.S.
Because most viruses have ribonucleic acid (RNA), a very unstable material for performing hybridizations – the process of detecting pathogens in clinical specimens – Maung developed a method that can detect pathogens on a chip in a few minutes, allowing her to identify viral infections quickly. Using this method, Maung successfully detected a very infectious pig virus, PRRSv Porcine Respiratory and Reproductive Syndrome. Her internship is funded by CTNext, a branch of Connecticut Innovations.
This spring, competing against students from Yale University, the University of Connecticut, and other New England universities, Maung won the Connecticut Microelectronic and Optoelectronic Consortium Best Poster Award for her work titled "Bionanosensor Study for the Detection of Direct RNA Hybridization."
Saion Sinha, professor of physics, biomedical and electrical engineering, says he is thrilled that Maung won the top prize and praised her for using her innovative thinking to work to solve a public health problem.
"She knows very well that early detection is the key for controlling the spread of these diseases," he says. "Her training in biomedical engineering has given her the added skills to develop instrumentation, which gets at the crux of this issue."
After graduating with her master’s in May, Maung will pursue her Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry at Wesleyan University. After that, she hopes to have a career as a research scientist.
The work, she says, gives her great purpose, knowing that "this kind of quick and early diagnosis could help to prevent people from suffering the complications of a disease."
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