As an analytical chemistry group at the University of Delaware, the Booksh Group’s research interests revolve around chemometrics, spectroscopy, and plasmonics. The development of in-situ chemical sensors for environmental, biomedical, and industrial process monitoring has been a large focus of the group. Specifically, the research group has been concentrating on advancement of fiber optic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) Raman, and fluorescence sensors. In developing these sensors we meld instrumental design with advanced data analysis (chemometrics) methods to achieve optimal instrumental performance. This research is driven by the realization that many measurement challenges – particularly problems involving analyte selectivity and sensitivity – are not best addressed by solely applying chemistry or physics solutions. These ‘physical’ solutions are often time, labor, and capital expensive. Instead, instrumental selectivity and sensitivity (and robustness) can often be enhanced by incorporating mathematical and statistical analysis of the collected data into the instrumental design.
