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Dr. John T. McDevitt received his B.S. degree in Chemistry in 1982 from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. There he was distinguished with the Chemistry Department Research Award. At Stanford University he completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1987 and was honored with a prestigious Grace Fellowship. Dr. McDevitt then completed postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In September of 1989, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UT. In 1990 received the Presidential Young Investigator Award and in 1991 was granted the Exxon Education Foundation Award. Dr. McDevitt was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in September of 1995. His early promotion to Full Professor became effective in the Fall semester of 2000. A long-standing research interest of the McDevitt group has been in the area of hybrid molecular assemblies as applied to sensor and device applications. On this foundation and taking inspiration from nature, the McDevitt group developed the concept for and launched a research program directed towards a chip-based technology suitable for the rapid analysis of complex fluids using"electronic taste chips". The McDevitt group's efforts here serve to provide a bridge between the macroscopic world of electrical engineering and the microscopic worlds of chemistry/biochemistry. To date, the electronic taste chips have been shown to be suitable for detection/quantification of acids, bases, salts, sugars, proteins, viruses, and DNA oligomers. Likewise, the chemical and biochemical content of complex fluids such as blood and urine can be digitized in near-real-time. Work is now in progress to correlate these "digital fingerprints" with important health, environmental and food safety/quality factors. This work was selected as part of Science Coalition’s Best Scientific Advances for the Year. Recent collaborative efforts completed in conjunction with Bruce Walker and William Rodriguez of Harvard Medical School - Massachusetts General Hospital have led to the development of microchip systems suitable for monitoring the immune function of HIV patients. The promising new technology has been tested and validated in Africa and now being developed more fully for a variety of important commercial and humanitarian activities by LabNow. At UT, Professor McDevitt has published over 130 papers in scientific journals and 30 patent applications. | 