Karen Scida

Research Associate Professor

Not Accepting Doctoral Students

microfluidics, point-of-care diagnostics, bioanalytical sensors, electrochemistry

At 3M, Scida worked for the Corporate Research Analytical Laboratory division, where she provided analytical and problem-solving support to all divisions of the company. There, she expanded her hands-on analytical technique skills in ion chromatography, organic functional group titrations, Karl-Fischer titrations, UV-Vis of solid and liquid samples, color analysis, quantitation of elemental C, N, H, and S in solid samples, among others. At Diagnostic Biochips, Inc., she began her journey in the neuroscience field. She took charge of a number of E-AB sensor development projects in addition to optimization of protocols for the use of silicon probes for deep brain stimulation and the thorough study of the field of real-time, neurochemical and neuropharmacological measurements in vivo. At the Lieber Institute, she applied her analytical skills to the development of in vitro and in vivo neurotransmitter-specific methods to evaluate the performance of the drugs created at the institute to understand and treat schizophrenia.

Scida received her B.S of Chemistry from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her Ph.D. work focused on studies of microfluidics, point-of-care diagnostics, bioanalytical sensors, and electrochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. During her postdoctoral research at University of California, Santa Barbara, she purposely expanded her analytical work to study bipolar electrochemical systems in nanoconfinement. She also collaborated with the pioneers of electrochemical, aptamer-based (E-AB) sensors on the development of new fabrication protocols for the enhancement of pharmacokinetic profile signals in live rats, achieving a precision orders of magnitude better than the gold standard LC-MS.