Four teams of researchers across the College of Science and the College of Engineering have been selected to receive seed funding from the Notre Dame Sensor Initiative (NDSI) for research advancing affordable, fast, and accurate platforms for on-site opioid detection.
As opioid overdoses continue to cause high rates of death and hospitalization nationwide, these researchers will work to develop devices that enable the rapid detection of opioids and other biological and chemical threats. Current laboratory methods allow for highly sensitive and accurate drug identification, but require the use of complex equipment and cost valuable time. On-site testing methods are also limited in their ability to detect low concentrations of substances as well as evolving opioid derivatives.
Notre Dame researchers will work to bring the accuracy of current lab methods to the field with portable devices designed to detect opioid presence, as well as partner with community organizations to increase awareness of the opioid crisis and new testing advancements.
“Detection is the first big hurdle to addressing the opioid crisis,” said Nosang Myung, director of the NDSI and the Bernard Keating-Crawford Professor of Engineering. “Providing individuals and organizations the resources to do so on-site and through our state-of-the-art facilities gives them the ability to collect valuable data that can then be used to improve public health outcomes.”
The projects selected are described below.
Turning fluorescence technology into a broad-scale detection system
Aiming to produce a portable sensor capable of detecting a wider range of opioid derivatives than current on-site techniques, Yichun Wang, the Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, will lead a project focusing on supramolecular-quantum dot (S-Qdot) fluorescence methods in conjunction with Matthew Webber, the Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Engineering and acting director of the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health, and Thomas O’Sullivan, the Frank M. Freimann Collegiate Professor of Biomedical Electronics in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
The project will build off previous work from Wang and Webber, which developed an S-Qdot fluorescent sensor, and previous work from O’Sullivan, who collaborated with Wang’s team to produce a working prototype portable device. The prototype detected a model drug at low concentrations—comparable to the current “gold standard” of in-lab measurement, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)—and more than 50 fentanyl analogs. The team’s seed-funded project will progress the prototype by enabling wireless data transfer and conducting field tests, thereby further refining the device’s stability and precision.
Applying membranes to collect and detect opioids in biological samples
Detection of opioids in biological samples such as urine and blood plasma generally requires precision at very low concentrations, normally requiring a lengthy process of sample treatment and analysis via LC-MS.
Merlin Bruening, the Donald and Susan Rice Professor of Engineering, and Kaiyu Fu, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, will work to simplify this process using a membrane-based device that can adsorb drugs from a solution, removing contaminants and increasing the drug’s concentration for better detection. These membranes could also allow for stable storage and transport of samples from areas where testing may not be immediately available. The team will also integrate nano-electrodes equipped with opioid-binding molecules into the membrane devices, yielding a portable device capable of detecting drugs in low amounts and transforming the technology into a sensor platform capable of highly selective detection in the field.
Developing portable bioassays to detect new opioids
When opioids with novel chemical structures enter the street drug supply, it can take months to years to figure out what they are and how potent they are. Meanwhile, they can cause clusters of overdoses that are difficult to predict or treat. Notre Dame researchers want to predict opioid effects and potency of novel substances on the human body, without waiting for overdoses to occur in humans.
Holly Goodson, professor, and Marya Lieberman, Nancy Dee Professor of Cancer Research, in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, supported by Patrick Flynn, Fritz Duda Family Professor of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will focus on developing portable bioassays—measurement devices that involve living systems—to assess the potency of unknown street drugs using a smartphone. The key is a strain of C. elegans modified by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, to express the human opioid receptor and behave differently when exposed to opioids. The final prototype will clip onto a phone camera to record their reaction to a drug sample. The system then uses a computer program to track the reaction and correlate it with the concentration of opioids present, since different amounts of opioids cause variations in behavior.
Forging data-sharing community partnerships
In order to respond to the presence of drugs in a community, the sharing of information among stakeholders is essential. Lieberman, associate director of the NDSI, will establish a community advisory board to set up agreements for sample collection and data sharing with external partners, including harm reduction groups, departments of public health, and first responders.
In addition, Notre Dame Serving Community Analytical Needs (ND-SCAN), the outreach arm of the NDSI, will offer free, high-level analysis of “drug trash” samples at the Analytical Science and Engineering at Notre Dame (ASEND) core facility, facilitating data collection on the presence of drugs in communities on behalf of these partners. In making this service available to external partners, ND-SCAN will support improving community response to changes in the composition of street drugs. The project will also develop, validate, and publish literature on methods for the analysis of drug trash.
NDSI and ND-SCAN are supported in part by the Notre Dame Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative, an effort that aims to advance human health and wellness through interdisciplinary biomedical research and training. To learn more, please visit the NDSI website and the University’s Strategic Framework website.
Originally published by Monica Sayler at sensorinitiative.nd.edu on March 25, 2026.