Development of Inexpensive, Turnkey Instrumentation and Software to Improve the Accessibility of Measurement Science

Abstract

In this dissertation, several new tools for portable and or automated measurements will be discussed, as well as new tools for the education of graduate students in the field of analytical chemistry. First, a portable, automated electrochemical measurement platform will be discussed. This platform is capable of making highly sensitive, quantitative, on-site measurements of heavy metals in aqueous solutions. It was designed to operate with no peripheral equipment, and at very low cost. Further, this instrument platform was designed from the ground up, with in-house authored firmware and software, to be extremely user friendly. With the automated experimentation and data analysis algorithms developed herein, layman and non-scientists can make use of this instrument to make measurements of heavy metals on-site, to parts per billion concentrations, in under thirty minutes. Second, a low-cost, automated rodent respiration rate monitor will be detailed. This platform is self-contained, and capable of passive respiration rate monitoring. It can be used to monitor the respiration rate of rodents over a wide range of sizes, and is small enough to be easily added to existing surgical workflows. This device was validated against the current gold standard of respiration rate assessment, as well as another commercially available form of active respiration rate monitoring. Third, a machine learning method for the automated identification of neurotransmitters measured via fast scan cyclic voltammetry will be discussed. This method was trained using a sizeable dataset mined from preexisting experimental archives within the Heien Lab. The trained model developed herein was shown to be highly effective for the identification of several neurotransmitters measured both in vitro and in vivo. Finally, an electronics laboratory aid and a software development curriculum is detailed. The work described allows students to gain hands-on experience with analog electronic systems through active experimentation with student and instructor built instrumentation. Further, students gain a functional understanding of software design as it pertains to recording and manipulating chemical data.