The COVID-19 pandemic has caused rapid changes across the globe in nearly every facet of life. Now, University of Connecticut professor of engineering Bahram Javidi is developing a low-cost, portable COVID-19 testing instrument to test for the virus just as quickly.<\/p>\n
Through support from the Office of the Vice President for Research\u2019s COVID-19 Research Seed Funding (COVID-RSF2) Program<\/a>, Javidi is developing a novel technology with the potential to improve COVID-19 testing capacities. Javidi has appointments in the School of Engineering\u2019s Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.<\/p>\n Javidi, who studies exotic optical imaging approaches for a broad array of applications from security systems to biomedicine, is now working to create an instrument that can quickly detect COVID-19.<\/p>\n The instrument uses a small blood sample, amounting to no more than a finger prick-worth of blood, to test for the virus. While still in the early stages of development, the instrument can provide results within minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cIf our approach is successful, it could tell the patient right on the spot if they have an infection, rather than waiting for days,\u201d Javidi says.<\/p>\n The device is relatively simple and does not require someone with advanced medical training to operate it.<\/p>\n Another advantage of Javidi\u2019s instrument is that it is small and portable. This would make it especially useful in rural settings where people may live hours away from the nearest hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cIn remote areas in the United States and globally where health care resources are diminished, this could be attractive,\u201d Javidi says.<\/p>\n Javidi is collaborating with UConn School of Medicine Dean Dr. Bruce Liang, who is working with COVID-19 patients at UConn Health. Liang has an ongoing COVID-19 study and\u00a0 is working with a pool of patients who have tested positive for COVID-19. Javidi says Dr. Liang\u2019s help is essential to determine the accuracy of the instrument Javidi\u2019s team developed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to collaborate with the research team to test the effectiveness of this simple yet innovative rapid testing technology that holds incredible promise to help our world revolutionize the widespread testing of patients suspected of having COVID-19, whether they live in small towns or big cities, or even general prevalence testing among certain populations,\u201d says Liang.<\/p>\n Javidi is currently collecting data to assess the effectiveness of the device. Once that is proven, he hopes to broaden his efforts to put the device to work in health care settings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Javidi serves as the director for the Multidimensional Optical Sensing & Imaging Systems (MOSIS) Laboratory<\/a>. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University.<\/em><\/p>\n Follow UConn Research on<\/em> Twitter<\/em><\/a> &<\/em> LinkedIn<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UConn researcher Bahram Javidi is developing a rapid, portable method of testing for COVID-19 that could be a boon to health care providers and patients alike. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":161680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2213,2256,2076,1868,2235,179],"tags":[2251,2257],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-166776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-coronavirus","category-innovation","category-research","category-meds","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-health","tag-coronavirus","tag-innovation"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 05:38:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166776"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166847,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166776\/revisions\/166847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/161680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166776"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=166776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=166776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}