Hi guys, I am Sebastian Cajigas, ESR14 in the CONSENSE consortium.
First, I would like to introduce myself. I was born and raised in Colombia, more specifically, in southern Colombia, in a small town known as Sandoná. However, after finishing my secondary school education at the age of 17, I moved to Medellín, one of the main cities of Colombia, to continue my university studies.
In 2016, I got my bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Antioquia (Colombia). As an undergraduate, I studied the correlation of functional groups of humic acids with photochemical properties. This research project allowed me to learn different characterization techniques, including FT-IR and UV-Vis spectroscopy, potentiometric titration, thermogravimetric analysis, and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Afterwards, in 2020, I obtained my master’s degree in chemical sciences in the Max Planck Tandem Group in Nanobioengineering at the same university. I specifically worked on the project entitled “Dual electrochemical magneto-nanogenosensor for differential diagnosis of Zika virus”, where I was in charge of the development of gold/DNA-based amplification in biosensing. I studied the temperature, ionic strength, pH, and length of DNA strands and nanobioconjugates for hybridization temperature on the stability of the nanobioconjugates. I developed hand-on-skills on the synthesis of nanomaterials, biofunctionalization, electrochemistry, and some principles in molecular biology. Luckily, the results of the project allowed us to publish two scientific papers and one review paper in the biosensing field.
Currently, I have the privilege of being part of the CONSENSE consortium as a PhD. candidate. I work with Dr. Junhong Yan and Prof. Menno Prins at Helia Biomonitoring and the Eindhoven University of Technology. We are working together on a novel biosensing technology known as biosensing by particle mobility (BPM) where my main goal is to study the stability of our BPM systems. To finish, I would like to say that, even with all the challenges that this journey involves, I am very happy with all the acquired knowledge, and, of course, excited for all the knowledge that I will acquire until I finish my PhD.
