COVID-19 Diagnostic Technologies

Tina Shaffaf received her bachelor’s (B.Sc.) in Animal Biology from Golestan University, Iran, and master’s (M.Sc.) in Molecular Genetics from the Shahid Chamran University of Tehran, Iran, master’s (M.Sc.) in Bioengineering from York University and Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the Shahid Chamran University of Tehran, Iran. Tina has worked on cell culture and differentiation and stem cell research; and now, she has focused on COVID-19 diagnostic strategies to help develop novel platforms for the early detection of infectious diseases including COVID-19. Her area of interest is PoC diagnostics with a focus on finding disease-specific biomarkers for early detection of various diseases. She has been working on different projects and participated in several national and international workshops, training programs and courses. Tina has published her research findings in international journals. Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in 2008. After one-year postdoctoral fellowship in McGill University, Canada, he joined the Department of Bioengineering as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lassonde School of Engineering and a Graduate Faculty Member in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, at York University. Professor Ghafar-Zadeh is the Director of Biologically Inspired Sensors and Actuators Laboratory (BioSA). During the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Ghafar-Zadeh’s research team has been involved in various research projects to fight COVID-19. He has published book on lab-on-a-chip applications and more than 140 conference and journal papers which include articles on portable sensing devices for detection of COVID-19 as well as COVID-19 diagnostic strategies using protein-based and nucleic acid-technologies.

• 1. Introduction2. Review of SARS-CoV-2 virology3. Nucleic acid-based tests for viral RNA detection4. Protein-based tests5. Novel Strategies for viral detection6. Conclusion