I am a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University and the MIT Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor in Materials Science & Engineering (2026-2027). My lab develops nanotechnology tools that make the invisible visible — including a nanotweezer platform that can detect individual nanoplastic particles in real time, at concentrations 10,000 times lower than any existing tool.

The measurement gap in nanoplastics science is real and consequential. When we sent water samples spiked with known concentrations of nanoplastics to leading commercial labs, they detected nothing — or reported plastics we never added. That gap is what my research is designed to close.

My work bridges fundamental science and real-world impact — generating the evidence that scientists, water utility operators, regulators, and policymakers need to make informed decisions about one of the most pervasive and least understood contaminants in our environment.

My book, Unmasking Nanoplastics: Measuring the World’s Invisible Plastic Problem, brings this science to general readers for the first time.