Ciara O'Sullivan

Ciara O'Sullivan

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Engineering Sciences

Ciara O' Sullivan received a BSc in Analytical Chemistry from Dublin City University in 1992, a PhD in Biotechnology from Cranfield University in 1996 and then went on to lead the sensors group at University College Cork from 1996-99. She then took up a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (1999-2001) and was then awarded a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship which she pursued for 1 year prior to taking up her current position as ICREA Research Professor and establishing the Nanobiotechnology and Bioanalysis Group at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. She is group leader of the GENCAT funded Consolidated Group INTERFIBIO.  Her group details can be found at www.interfibio.com.

Research interests

Her research interests lie in the development of electrochemical and optical biosensors exploiting advances in tailored biocomponents. Presently, her work focuses on reducing to practise cost-effective molecular diagnostics for screening and monitoring of disease, as well as on the development of aptamers for application in optical and electrochemical molecular aptamer beacons. The approaches for molecular diagnostics being developed include parallelised real-time electrochemical next generation sequencing, electrochemical array based primer extension and elongation for multiplexed SNP detection, multiplexed electrochemical miRNA detection and quantitative paper diagnostics as companion tools for the future paradigm of pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine. 

Selected publications

- Svobodova M, Skouridou V, Jauset-Rubio M, et al. 2022, 'Aptamer Sandwich Assay for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Antigen', Acs Omega, 6(51), 35657-35666.

- Gaiani G, Cucchi F, Toldrà A, et al. 2022, 'Electrochemical biosensor for the dual detection of Gambierdiscus australes and Gambierdiscus excentricus in field samples. First report of G. excentricus in the Balearic Islands', Science Of The Total Environment, 806, 4, 150915.

- Ortiz M, Jauset-Rubio M, Kodr D, Simonova A, Hocek M & O'Sullivan CK 2022, 'Solid-phase recombinase polymerase amplification using ferrocene-labelled dNTPs for electrochemical detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms', Biosensors & Bioelectronics, 198, 113825.

- Jauset-Rubio M, Ortiz M & O'Sullivan CK 2022, 'Exploiting the Nucleic Acid Nature of Aptamers for Signal Amplification', Biosensors-basel, 12, 11, 972.

- Chahin N, Escobar-Nassar S, Osma J, Bashammakh AS, AlYoubi AO, Ortiz M & O'Sullivan CK 2022, 'Low-Cost Platform for Multiplexed Electrochemical Melting Curve Analysis', ACS Measurement Science Au, 2, 2, 147–156.

Selected research activities

Associate Editor, Analytical Chemistry

Associate Editor, Acs Measurement Science Au

Industrial contract with ACHIKO Ag for the development of diagnostic test for Dengue fever

Industrial contract with Masquelier's for the evaluation of ionophore activity

Project Reviewer for ANR, France

Project Reviewer for EU Horizon

Patent application for SARS-CoV-2 test for detection of antibodies

Member of Advisrory Board of EPSRC funded iSense