Labellelabs Engineering

At Labellelabs, we are focused on helping entrepreneurial scientists/engineers design and prototype medical (and non-medical) products in connection with GCU’s Innovation Center, Cybersecurity, Colangelo College of Business, and CSET while providing students with opportunities to learn new skills while developing novel technologies.

We currently have a multitude of projects aimed at assisting patients in improving their daily life and disease management. One division of our lab is aimed at developing electrochemical sensors for various biomarkers to detect and manage a patient’s disease. The novelty of our design is regardless of sample: tear fluid, saliva, or blood, we use label-free electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, to obtain results in minutes. Other areas focus on improving current wearable technology or developing novel methods as the next leap for advanced health monitoring as in noninvasive biomedical devices and wearable technologies. Additionally, we also develop prosthetics and make use of advanced manufacturing and workforce development tools. We have a well-diversified group to tackle the challenges in health care today with an interdisciplinary team of staff and students that come from biomedical, chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering, computer science, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and nursing programs as well as the school of business.

Kentaro Hiraka (K.H.) is a visiting scholar at GCU. He obtained a BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Engineering from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He has worked towards developing novel lactate sensing systems using engineered lactate oxidase. As part of the collaboration with Prof. La Belle, he worked as a research scholar at Arizona State University from 2016 to 2017 and returned to GCU in 2021. He specializes in gene cloning from bacteria, recombinant production of enzymes, site-directed mutagenesis of enzymes with gene modification, and electrochemical analysis of enzymatic biosensors. K.H. is currently researching biosensors with us after being selected as the 1^st Overseas Research Fellowships by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at GCU.

Regardless of the project, our focus is on developing novel technologies that can/will be used daily. This philosophy results in a strong focus on customer needs and initial feasibility studies to fail fast. Further, this takes our research past theoretical applications and includes aspects of business development and end user assessment. This research is all done within an apprenticeship model to give researchers the skills they need to go to grad school, industry, or start a company.

Affiliated Investigators: Click investigators name to read bio

Jeff La Belle                         [email protected]

Cassandra Wright           [email protected]