COSAM professor wins international award

Eric Bakker, an alumni professor in the Auburn University College of Sciences and Mathematics (COSAM) Chemistry Department recently received the 2004 Roche Diagnostics Prize for Sensor Technology during the Seventh European Conference on Optical Chemical Sensors and Biosensors in Madrid, Spain.

Upon selection by an independent international scientific committee, Roche Diagnostics presents the international award every two years to a young scientist under the age of 42 for his/her outstanding achievements in the fields of chemical sensing and biosensing. This is only the second time this award has been given.

"Receiving this award is a high honor," Bakker said. "It is a reflectance of the very high citation rates that our work has received in the past few years, with over 3,000 worldwide citations from some 110 publications, and strongly indicates that our work has had a very high impact on the field. I am proud of my students and postdocs for the excellent science they have done in the past few years, and am pleased others in the world feel the same way."

Bakker's research focuses on chemical sensors based on molecular recognition and extraction principles. He has helped develop ion-selective electrodes with massively lower detection limits and today these sensors can be routinely designed to achieve detection limits in the nanomolar concentration range, a feat that was impossible to imagine a few years ago. Other research directions that were specifically outlined at the award ceremony were the development of microsphere-based fluorescent sensors for the measurement of blood electrolytes and their integration into flow systems and optical fiber bundles, and the use of novel electrochemical protocols to the design of reversible sensors for blood anticoagulants such as heparin. He has received research support of nearly $2 million from the National Institutes of Health, the American Chemical Society and Beckman Coulter, Inc., over the past six years for his chemical sensor work.

"In a relatively short time, Eric Bakker has established himself as one of the leading scientists in his field. His contributions have potentially important applications in medicine and environmental studies and have led to a significant lowering of detection limits in biosensor technology, thus making it preferable in many situations to competing techniques which are either more expensive or less convenient to utilize," said Howard Hargis, Head of COSAM's Chemistry Department. "The Roche award formalizes worldwide recognition of his contributions to this important area of analytical chemistry."

A native of the Netherlands, Bakker received a diploma of chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1989 and received his doctor of natural sciences in analytical chemistry from the Institute in 1993. After working as a postdoc at the University of Michigan, Bakker joined the Auburn University faculty in 1995.

In addition to his teaching and research Bakker serves on editorial boards for the journals Electroanalysis and Talanta. He has received numerous awards including the 2000 Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society's Research Award and the 2001 Young Investigator Award from the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry. He became an alumni professor in 2001.

Roche Diagnostics, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is one of the world's leading innovation-driven healthcare groups. It is number one in the global diagnostics market and is the leading supplier of pharmaceuticals for cancer and a leader in virology and transplantation.