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The W. A. E. McBryde Medal is presented to a young scientist working in Canada who has made a significant achievement in pure or applied analytical chemistry.
View the Terms of Reference and list of Past Winners
The 2024 winner of the W. A. E. McBryde Medal is:
Michael Serpe, MCIC
University of Alberta
Michael Serpe is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Central Florida in 2000 and Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004. After conducting postdoctoral research in industry, he joined the group of Steven Craig at Duke University as a postdoctoral researcher in 2006. Dr. Serpe joined the University of Alberta in 2009, achieving the rank of Full Professor in 2018; he is also an Associate Dean – Graduate in the Faculty of Science.
Dr. Serpe’s research involves the application of stimuli-responsive polymers to solve problems related to the environment and human health. The Serpe Group is best known in the analytical chemistry community for their work on stimuli-responsive polymer-based sensors and biosensors (etalons). Early work focused on building a fundamental understanding of the etalons, while later work has been focused on their adaptation to achieve point-of-care diagnostic devices. The group’s latest research efforts have focused on developing a portable orthophosphate (PO43– ) sensor by exploiting enzymatic reactions, and an off-the-shelf glucose test strip. Importantly, slight adaptations to this approach have allowed the quantitation of SARS-CoV-2 virus and antibody in both human saliva and serum, DNA, and small molecules utilizing DNA-based aptamers.