Haoran Wei
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Engineering·Early-career
Safe drinking water depends on catching harmful chemicals at very low levels, yet many water systems rely on lab tests that are slow and expensive. This project aims to build a faster, low-cost way to screen drinking water for regulated organic contaminants.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy
drinking water
water quality monitoring
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Determine how a contaminant's chemical properties, its binding to the sensor surface, and water acidity and salts control SERS (surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy) sensitivity, using adsorption measurements, controlled water experiments, and density functional theory modeling.
- Develop multivariate statistical methods that identify and measure contaminants using orientation-dependent vibrational signatures, signal features set by how a molecule sits on the surface, that repeat reliably across different plasmonic sensor surfaces.
- Build deep learning models that separate overlapping SERS signals, measure contaminant amounts, and reduce interference in mixed-contaminant samples and varied water chemistries, aiming for sub-part-per-billion detection.
More about the research
It pairs a light-based chemical sensor with artificial intelligence (AI) that reads the sensor's signals.
Why it matters
Water utilities could use a rapid, low-cost screening tool to flag possible contamination by chemicals regulated under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drinking water rules, then target expensive follow-up lab tests where they are needed. This could lower the cost of water testing and help protect public health. The modeling work could also guide better sensor designs for other environmental monitoring.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rupa Haldavnekar
University of Oklahoma, OK·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) sensing approach, a light-based method that reads molecular fingerprints, to detect subtle blood-based changes signaling early ovarian tumor formation.
Mahmoud Almasri
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Engineering
Develop a Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy sensor that uses metal nanoantennas on a side-polished optical fiber to quickly detect and measure Salmonella types in poultry samples.
Maria Kamenetska
Boston University, MA·Chemistry·Early-career
Build an all-optical microscope that uses optical tweezers to hold single molecules between two gold nanoparticles in solution. Test whether darkfield and Raman light signals reveal charge transport without force damage.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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