Lab Address
Education
Research Areas
Group Members
Research Associate:
Dr. Lina Ma
Postdoctoral Fellow:
Dr. Azadeh Nilghaz
Dr. Jane Ru Choi
Graduate Student:
Jinsong Feng (Ph.D. candidate)
Shaolong Feng (Ph.D. candidate)
Mohammed Hakeem (Ph.D. candidate)
Lu Han (M.S. student)
Yaxi Hu (Ph.D. candidate)
Marti Hua (M.S. student)
Luyao Ma (Ph.D. student)
Evan Trofimchuk (M.S. student)
Anestis Tzanidis (M.S. student)
Kaidi Wang (M.S. student)
Undergraduate Student:
Sally Chen
Cindy Huang
Hebe Liu
Vivien Nie
Marlen Peterson
Kitty Seah
Joshua Sungkarto
Gianna Wang
Angeline Zhang
Alumni
Suqi Wang (2013): FNH undergraduate student
Elaine Peh (2013): Visiting student, Food Science, National University of Singapore
Elfi Anggreani (2014): FNH undergraduate student. Current: graduate student at Food Science, Cornell University
Jenny Qi (2014): FNH undergraduate student
Stephanie Pan (2015): Visiting student, Food Science, National University of Singapore
Yaxi Hu (2015): M.S. Thesis: “Development of innovative biosensors for the determination of melamine in milk”
Hongwu Bai (2015): Visiting scholar, Institute of Food Safety, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
Fang Gao (2015): Ph.D. Thesis: “Determination of small molecules in food matrices by molecularly imprinted polymers and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy”
Dr. Mohamed S. Draz (2016): Postdoctoral fellow
Wen Liao (2016): FNH undergraduate student
Candice Zheng (2016): FNH undergraduate student. Current: graduate student at Food Science, Cornell University
Amy Huang (2016): FNH undergraduate student
Jehan Campenon (2016): Visiting student, Engineering School of Agri-Food, Agrosup Dijon, France
Jiaqi Li (2016): M.S. Thesis: “The effects of meat juice on biofilm formation of Campylobacter and Salmonella”
Zihua Chen (2016): UBC Pharmaceutical Science undergraduate student
Jing Chen (2016): Visiting scholar, College of Marine Science, Huaihai Institute of Technology, China
Luyao Ma (2016): M.S. Thesis: “Biomimetic molecularly imprinted polymers: a new quorum sensing capturing agent to prevent bacterial biofilm formation”
Angel Chen (2016): FNH undergraduate student
Dr. Yiwei Tang (2016): Postdoctoral fellow. Current: Associate Professor at Food Science, Bohai University, China
Gracia Windiasti (2016): M.S. Thesis: “Investigating the synergistic antimicrobial effect of carvacrol and zinc oxide nanoparticles against Campylobacter jejuni”
Jingyi Feng (2017): M.S. Thesis: “Determination of thiabendazole in orange juice by a MIPs-SERS chemosensor”
Norris Huang (2017): FNH undergraduate student
Yi Chen Teh (2017): FNH undergraduate student
Marti Hua (2017): FNH undergraduate student. Current: Graduate student at Food Science, UBC
Bowen Zhao (2017): M.S. Thesis: “Molecularly imprinted polymers-based colorimetric-SERS dual biosensor for the detection of atrazine in apple juice”
Research Interests
The Lu’s Food Safety Engineering Lab at UBC works on developing innovative and rapid sensing, instrumentation systems and detection methods for ensuring food safety and preventing food bioterrorism. Students in the Lu lab employ their diverse backgrounds in engineering, analytical chemistry, molecular microbiology, biophysics and advanced mathematics to develop novel biophotonic, nano-biosensing and nano-optical imaging techniques and apply these to a variety of systems related to food chemical and microbiological (pathogenic bacteria and highly-contagious virus) safety.
We focus on both mechanism elucidation and knowledge translation to tackle research challenges in food safety and food industry.
Our current research is focused on six major directions:
(1) Developing nano-biosensor and nano-based single-molecule biophotonics coupled with various separation techniques to rapidly detect chemical and microbiological hazards in food systems;
(2) Campylobacter-associated food safety;
(3) Food microbiology, including detection and molecular characterization of foodborne pathogens, evaluation of intervention technologies to reduce pathogens in food systems, assessment of bacterial biofilms, and study of bacterial response due to environmental stresses;
(4) Characterization of emerging foodborne viruses, nanoscopic optical imaging for contagious virus tracking and virus-host cell interaction investigation;
(5) Development and application of advanced mathematical modelling to monitor and predict the prevalence of foodborne pathogens (bacteria and viruses) in agri-food systems;
(6) Detection of food fraud and adulteration; identification of food mislabelling.
Courses