Ossama Assad

Ossama Assad has worked in various roles in the field of science and technology since 2007. Ossama began their career as a Graduate Student at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, where they explored the formation of highly stabilized non-oxidized silicon nanowires and silicon substrate surfaces, layer-by-layer (LBL) self-assembly of organic thin films to create structurally and electronically robust passivation interfaces as well as molecular adsorbing films. Ossama also developed and invented a general and efficient approach for depositing highly ordered and aligned nanowire arrays on various receiver substrates, and designed, fabricated, and tested molecularly modified silicon nanowire-field effect transistors (SiNW FETs) to detect and discriminate polar and nonpolar volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

In 2013, they took on a Postdoctoral Research Associate role at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, where they designed, fabricated, and tested nano-scale devices based on sub-5 nm solid-state nanopores for single biomolecule analysis, and utilized these devices for real-time optical and electrical detection of unlabeled single DNA molecules.

The following year, they moved to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, where they developed and characterized a method to control and fine-tune the optical properties of ultrathin silicon nitride (SiNx) membranes using focused electron beam radiation, and applied this method to enable the detection of dual color single molecule DNA barcode.

In 2015, they returned to Technion - Israel Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, where they designed, developed, and characterized a plasmonic nanopore biosensor that suppresses the background fluorescence from bulk and yields a net >10-fold enhancement of the fluorescence intensity, and utilized this biosensor for a synchronized electrical and optical detection of individual DNA molecules at extremely low laser powers and high signal-to-background ratio.

Most recently, in 2016, they took on the role of Director of Sequencing and Nanofab, and Senior Scientist at Quantapore Inc., where they designed and developed a process flow for mass-scale production of Quantapore’s sequencing chips, originated the concept and proved the feasibility of a new fabrication method to develop a high throughput nanopore device, and contributed to the development of Quantapore’s first-generation sequencing platform, including designing, implementing, and evaluating hardware and chemistry.

Ossama Assad received their Bachelor of Science in Materials Science and Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology between 2002 and 2007. Ossama then went on to pursue a Master of Science in the Laboratory for Nanomaterial based Devices (LNBD), Department of Chemical Engineering at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, which they completed in 2009. Finally, they earned their Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the same field from 2007 to 2012.