Grover Lab

Disintegration Fingerprinting preprint on medRxiv

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Our latest low-cost technique for identifying counterfeit medicines is the subject of a new preprint on medRxiv.

Disintegration fingerprinting uses a water-filled transparent plastic cup atop a conventional magnetic stirrer. An inexpensive sensor mounted on the outside of the cup shines infrared light into the cup and measures the amount of light that is reflected back to the sensor. When a pill is added to the stirred water, the pill begins to disintegrate into particles that swirl around inside the cup. Whenever one of these particles passes near the infrared sensor, the particle reflects additional light back to the sensor and creates a millisecond-duration peak in a plot of sensor output vs. time. The number of particles in the water changes over time as the particles continue to disintegrate and (in some cases) eventually dissolve away. By plotting the number of particles detected vs. time, we create a Disintegration Fingerprint that can be used to identify the drug product. In a proof-of-concept study, we used DF to analyze 96 pills from 32 different drug products (including antibiotics, opioid and non-opioid analgesics, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, antiemetics, antihistamines, decongestants, muscle relaxants, expectorants, sleep aids, cold medicines, antacids, hormonal birth control, and dietary supplements, as well as a simulated falsified drug product). We found that DF correctly identified 90% of these pills, and the technique can even distinguish name-brand and generic versions of the same drug. By providing a fast (60-minute), inexpensive ($33 USD), and easy-to-use tool for identifying substandard and falsified medicines, Disintegration Fingerprinting can play an important role in the fight against fake drugs.

Dr. Grover on the Partnership for Safe Medicines podcast

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It was a pleasure talking with Shabbir Safdar, Executive Director for the Partnership for Safe Medicines, about our work combatting fake medicines.

You can listen to our conversation on the Partnership for Safe Medicines podcast here!

A low-cost open-source RFID tracker for insects

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It was a pleasure working with Dr. Erica Sarro Gustilo and Dr. Hollis Woodard on “RFIDbee,” a low-cost open-source RFID insect tracker that was used by Erica and Hollis to study queen bumble bees in this study in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Want to build your own RFIDbee? The hardware and software is available for download on open.groverlab.org!

Massive thanks to the National Science Foundation and the Frank G. and Janice B. Delfino Agricultural Technology Research Initiative at the University of California Riverside for funding the development of RFIDbee!

Controlling biomedical devices using pneumatic logic

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Shane Hoang’s work on using pneumatic logic to control biomedical devices (like the laboratory blood shaker/rocker shown here) was published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering! Special thanks to our coauthors Mabel Shehada, Konstantinos Karydis, and Philip Brisk.

Air-powered logic circuits for error detection in pneumatic systems

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Shane Hoang’s work on using pneumatic logic to calculate parity bits and detect errors in air-powered systems was published in Device! Special thanks to our coauthors Mabel Shehada, Zinal Patel, Minh-Huy Tran, Konstantinos Karydis, and Philip Brisk.

"CandyCodes" for fighting fake medicines

Fri, 06 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000

With their random multicolored patterns, each of these chocolate candies is unique. So what’s that good for? In a new paper out today in Scientific Reports, we show that these “CandyCodes” could help in the fight against counterfeit medications.

Shane's pneumatic RAM chip published in PLOS ONE

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Shane Hoang’s paper “A pneumatic random-access memory for controlling soft robots” was published in PLOS ONE. Shane developed a “pneumatic RAM chip,” a pneumatic logic circuit capable of controlling pneumatic soft robots. By dramatically reducing the amount of electronic hardware required to control soft robots, the pneumatic RAM can accelerate the spread of soft robotic technologies to a wide range of important application areas.

Thanks to our coauthors Konstantinos Karydis and Philip Brisk for their help with this work!

Our work on obtaining dissolution profiles from single controlled-release drug particles using vibrating tube sensors published in Scientific Reports

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Heran Bhakta and Jessica Lin’s paper “Measuring dissolution profiles of single controlled-release drug pellets” was published in Scientific Reports.

Heran and Jessica show that a simple and inexpensive vibrating tube sensor can measure the dissolution of single microgram-sized controlled-release pellets in physiologically relevant fluids with nanogram-scale resolution. Their technique addresses many of the shortcomings of existing USP testing methods, requires no additional analytical instrumentation like UV-VIS or HPLC, and is suitable for both fast-dissolving and slow-dissolving formulations. And by obtaining dissolution profiles for single pellets instead of populations of pellets, their technique is capable of measuring pellet-to-pellet variations in dissolution behavior that are much more difficult to measure using existing methods. Using this technique, we observed significant variations in single-pellet dissolution profiles, not only between different types of drugs in different physiological conditions, but also between generic and name-brand formulations of the same drug, and even between different pellets from the exact same capsule.

This technique provides pharmaceutical researchers and producers with a simple, low-cost, and fully automated tool for obtaining single-pellet dissolution profiles from any drug in any desired fluid. This capability should be powerful in a variety of different scenarios. For example, measurements of the dissolution behavior of pellets from each production batch can provide valuable quality assurance data and illuminate possible production defects before the product reaches consumers. Even within a single batch, single pellet dissolution profiles provide information about the consistency of the pellet manufacturing process. And as a gravimetric (mass-based) method, this technique places no constraints on the chemical or physical composition of the fluid surrounding the pellet, meaning that pharmaceutical developers are free to measure pellet dissolution in any physiologically-relevant fluid without fear that the fluid will interfere with the measurement process. For these reasons, vibrating tube sensors should help facilitate the development of better controlled-release pharmaceuticals with better patient outcomes.

ChemStor published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 09:00:00 +0000

ChemStor (a collaboration with Jason Ot, Daniel Tan, Tyson Loveless, and Philip Brisk) is the subject of a paper published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.

ChemStor is a software tool that uses principles from formal methods—a branch of computer science—to safely store and dispose of chemicals. Chemical-related accidents in labs and homes are all too common. In just one example, each year, 4500 injuries are caused by simply mixing incompatible pool chemicals. ChemStor informs the user if two or more chemicals pose a threat if stored or mixed together. If it is integrated into voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, ChemStor could help keep researchers and the public safe around chemicals.

Christopher Hale and Heran Bhakta's work on Differential Densimetry published in AIP Advances

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000

Heran Bhakta’s collaboration with Christopher Hale in Prof. Victor Rodgers’ lab resulted in the paper “Differential densimetry: A method for determining ultra-low fluid flux and tissue permeability,” published in AIP Advances. Chris and Heran used pairs of vibrating tube density sensors to measure extremely-small flows of fluid through biological samples.