UT Tyler Professor Awarded USDA Grant

Office of Marketing and Communications

October 13, 2022

Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303

Shawana Tabassum, PhD, assistant professor of electrical engineering at The University of Texas at Tyler, has received a nearly $319,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to develop wearable sensors for freshwater fish to enhance water toxicity monitoring.

Tabassum studies flexible and soft sensors, micro/nano-optics, microfluidic devices, micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (M/NEMS) and their applications in sustainable agriculture and environment, plant sciences and biomedicine.

“Aqua-FIT: Early Diagnosis of Water Toxicity Driven by Fish-Mounted Low-cost and Miniaturized Sensors” will provide real-time and location-based quantitative indicators of fish health, including metabolism and chemical substance levels, for early identification signals in water quality assessment. A recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Integrity Project found that half of U.S. rivers and streams are so polluted, that they are classified as “impaired.”

“It is crucial to provide 'early warning' monitoring of the fish health, which in turn, signifies water quality,” said Tabassum. “Agricultural waste, such as pesticides and fertilizers, when leached into the water body causes water pollution and adversely affects species living in the water. Moreover, the biosensors developed will be a quicker and low-cost alternative to existing lab-based tests.”

The project’s current scope is smaller water bodies including ponds located at a USDA aquaculture research facility, however, results generated from this project are expected to lead to future studies with larger bodies of water, she added.

“This is an innovative project that addresses an important problem, which is the preservation of aquatic environments," said Steven Idell, MD, PhD, UT Tyler senior vice president for research. "The novel technology has broad applications that could in the future advance agricultural or even biomedical monitoring and outcomes."

Tabassum joined the UT Tyler engineering faculty in 2020. She holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Iowa State University and a Bachelor of Science in electrical and electronics engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

With a mission to improve educational and healthcare outcomes for East Texas and beyond, UT Tyler offers more than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs to 10,000 students. UT Tyler recently merged with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (now known as UT Tyler Health Science Center). Through its alignment with UT Tyler Health Science Center (HSC) and UT Health East Texas, UT Tyler has unified these entities to serve Texas with quality education, cutting-edge research and excellent patient care. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News & World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.