Yigit Bionanotechnology Lab

Department of Chemistry and The RNA Institute

State University of New York, Albany

HOME

Pesident Rodríguez's visit to our lab on May 1st, 2025

Yigit Lab 2025

The Yigit Lab is housed in the Life Sciences Research Building at the University at Albany, SUNY. It is affiliated with the Chemistry Department and the RNA Institute at the State University of New York at Albany. The lab's research focuses on DNA nanotechnology, metallic nanoparticles, and CRISPR systems for biomedical and environmental applications

RNA Institute Retreat

The 2024 RNA Institute Retreat at Lake George was a success! Thanks Emmett and Jeevan for participation.

Lab Highlights:

We were honored to welcome President Rodríguez to our lab on May 1st, 2025.
Reggie Gold, has been awarded the Albert Mossin Scholarship for the 2025–26 academic year. This prestigious scholarship will cover his tuition during his MS studies at UAlbany. As always, Well done Reggie!
Congratulations to Emmett Hanson for receiving 2025 Shelton Bank Award for Excellence.
Congratulations Reggie Gold for receiving the 2025 Chemistry Faculty Award!
Congratulations Emmett Henson for receiving best Undergraduate Student Award at the 2025 Capital Region STEM Poster Showcase sponsored by Regeneron
Congratulations Emmett Hanson for acceptance to the SUNY Chancellor’s Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates at the RNA Institute (REU in RNA) with full scholarship.
Congratulations Reggie Gold for 2025 Outstanding Undergraduate in Biochemistry or Chemical Biology Award from the American Chemical Society.

Reggie receives ACS membership and BIOL division membership with no cost.

Congratulations Natalie Connell for being accepted to University of Albany’s 2025 Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) with Undergraduate research fellowship with scholorship.
Congratulations to Emmett for receiving the Sorrell Chesin Research Award for Spring 2025.

The Sorrell Chesin Research Award was established to encourage full-time undergraduate students to undertake research experience in the Life Sciences, and to recognize those who are engaged in research under the direction of a University at Albany Faculty member.

Congratulations to Emmett on his paper being accepted for publication in Small.
Dr. Yigit has been awarded the NIH MIRA for Established Investigators, securing approximately $2 million in funding to support the lab's research between 2025-2030. Highlights on campus news.
We were on TV: ABC News10. This RNA nanotechnology is among many we are working on.
Mahera's work made to Times Union news. The news appeared on the front page of Times Union on December 23th, 2024.
Mahera's work made to UAlbany news.
Mahera's recent work is accepted as an inside cover page in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Well done! --> cover page and article:
Congratulations Emmett for winning the 2024 RNA Summer in-person Research and Outstanding Poster Presentation Award.
Congratulations to Emmett for the 2024 Shelton Bank Award for Excellence, an undergraduate chemisty award recognizing outstanding research achievements.
Congratulations to Hilal for two undergraduate awards; 2023-2024 Presidential Award for Undergraduate Research and Outstanding Senior Award, a President’s Award for Leadership.
Congratulations to Mahera who is elected as a 2023 Future Leader by the Eastern New York chapter of the American Chemical Society.
Yigit Lab was awarded with $611,000 grant from USDA/NIFA Nanotechnology for Agriculture and Food Systems progam --> link.
Dr. Yigit was honored with the 2023 Excellence in RNA Research Award by the RNA Institute.
Dr. Yigit received $387,186 NIH funds in collaboration with Profs Melinda Larsen, Scott Tenenbaum, Andre Melendez to study cell senescence and salivary gland dysfunction: link
Congratulations to Mahera who is elected as a 2023 Future Leader by the Eastern New York chapter of the American Chemical Society.
Chris defended his Ph.D. Thesis "Development of Nucleic Acid Diagnostics for Targeted and Non-targeted Biosensing". Congratulations and good luck in your next steps!
Congratulations to Mahera for her best poster award at the 2022 Workshop for Interaction and Scientific Collaboration (WISC) symposium.
Mahera developed a highly modular, 4-h long and three-tier signal amplification assay that can detect as little as 3 copies of full hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome. The work is titled "Recombinase Amplified CRISPR Enhanced Chain Reaction (RACECAR) for Viral Genome Detection" and has been published in Nanoscale,2022,14,37,13500-13504. Great work!
Chris' paper titled "Machine Learning Enabled Nanosensor Array for Monitoring Citrus Juice Adulteration" is published in ACS Food Science and Technology, 2022, 2, 8, 1217-1223. Well done!
Dr. Yigit's presentation titled "Machine Learning Enabled Nanosensor Array for Quality Control in Food Industry" was selected as a talk at the 2022 Gordon Research Conference of Nanoscale Science and Engineering for Agriculture and Food Systems.
Congratulations to Mahera for her Outstanding Research Poster award at the 8th Annual RNA Symposium. Well done!
Chris' paper titled Algorithmically Guided Optical Nanosensor Selector (AGONS): Guiding Data Acquisition, Processing, and Discrimination for Biological Sampling" has been published in ACS Analytical Chemistry, 2022, 94, 2, 1195-1202.
Congratulations to Chris for his best poster award at the 2021 Workshop for Interaction and Scientific Collaboration (WISC) symposium.
Chris' paper titled "Recognition of DNA target formulations by CRISPR-Cas12a using a dsDNA reporter" is published in ACS Synth. Biol. 2021, 10, 7, 1785–1791. Well done!
Congratulations to Chris for receiving the Markus Landthaler Award from the Hudson Valley RNA Club (HVRC) for Best RNA Paper in 2020 based on his publication Biochemistry, 2020, 59, 15, 1474-1481.
Nidhi won the 2nd place and a prize in the tree-minute thesis dissertation competition with the talk titled "Looking at the big picture differently". Congratulations.
Chris received Best Flash Talk in 2021 Life Sciences Research Symposium. Well done!
Congratulations to Mahera and Nidhi for their recent publications in ACS Analytical Chemistry and ACS Applied Nanomaterials, respectively.
Nidhi has employed nanoparticle-DNA assemblies for identification of bacterial strains using machine learning (ML) algorithms.-->ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2020, 3, 12, 11709–11714.
Mahera has combined CRISPR-Cas12a system and Hybridization Chain Reaction (HCR) to develop a gel-electrophoresis diagnostic assay --> ACS Anal. Chem. 2021, 93, 4, 1934 - 1938.
Nidhi's work on nanozyme is accepted for publication in ChemBioChem. Well-done Nidhi!
Muhan's DNA hydrogel work is accepted for publication work is accepted in Chemical Communications. Well done- Muhan!
Chris' paper is accepted in Biochemistry. Congratulations!
Congratulations to Bilal! His paper is accepted in ChemMedChem as very important paper (VIP).
Congratulations to Mahera for her runnerup poster award at the 2019 Life Sciences Reseach Symposium: link.
Nidhi defended her preliminary proposal.
Dr. Yigit is promoted to Associate Professor rank.
Yigit Lab is awarded with NIH and USDA grants.
Nidhi's nanozyme work was accepted for publication in ChemBioChem.
Erik's review paper is accepted for publication in ACS Sensors.
Nidhi's paper is accepted for publication as an invited article in the special issue of "Nucleic Acids Nanoscience at Interfaces" in Langmuir.
Mustafa Salih's work is accepted for publication in Analytical Chemistry. Congrats!
Muhit's logic gate work is published in J. Mater. Chem. C. Well done, Muhit!
Dr. Yigit participated "Food for Finals" and served up a late-night breakfast to undergraduate students on Dec. 12 2017.
National Geographic story on our recent detection technique is now online: National Geographic Story
Ebola work is featured in National Geographic 2017 September issue.

Google Sites

Report abuse