Allison Yorita is a staff engineer in the Implantables Microsystems group, located within the Materials Engineering Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She joined LLNL in 2016 as a postdoctoral researcher, transitioning to staff engineer in 2019. Dr. Yorita has led multiple projects as a principal investigator at LLNL, focused on flexible implantable arrays for detection of electrical and chemical signals in the body. With a background in chemical engineering, her research focus has been in creating novel chemical sensors for detection of a variety of biomolecules and chemicals at high spatial and temporal resolution. Leveraging LLNL’s work in fabricating high channel count, flexible microelectrode arrays, she aims to add additional sensing modalities to the array platform for better insight into the body’s microenvironment, with a focus on the central and peripheral nervous system.

Dr. Yorita comes to LLNL from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained her Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 2016. Her graduate work focused on microfabrication and development of silicon-based chemical sensors for detection of neurotransmitters, as well as development of a bioelectronic diagnostic tool for sensitive, selective detection of nucleic acid sequences from pathogens.

Ph.D. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California

Sc.B. Chemical Engineering, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

Park SJ, Ivanovskaya A, Yorita AM. “Synthesis and Fabrication of Single Walled Carbon Nanotube Microelectrode Arrays on Flexible Probes for Neurotransmitter Detection.” MSEC 2022. Accepted for publication, June 2022.

A Ivanovskaya, A Belle, A Yorita, F Qian, S Chen, A Tooker, R Lozada, D Dahlquist, V Tolosa, “Electrochemical Roughening of Thin-Film Platinum Macro and Microelectrode,” JOVE 148, 2019 https://doi.org/10.3791/59553

Joo HR, Fan JL, Chen S, Pebbles JA, Liang H, Chung JE, Yorita AM, Tooker AC, Tolosa VM, Geaghan-Breiner C, Roumis DK, Liu DF, Haque R, Frank LM. “A microfabricated, 3D-sharpened silicon shuttle for insertion of flexible electrode arrays through dura mater into brain,” J. of Neural Eng. Volume 16, Number 6, October 2019. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/ab2b2e

Ivanovskaya AN, Belle AM, Yorita AM, Qian F, Chen S, Tooker A, Lozada RG, Dahlquist D, Tolosa V. “Electrochemical roughening of thin-film platinum for neural probe arrays and biosensing applications,” J. Electrochem. Soc. Volume 165, issue 12, G3125-G3132, August 2018. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0171812jes

Koo B*, Yorita AM*, Schmidt JJ, Monbouquette HG. “Amplification-free, sequence-specific 16S rRNA detection at 1 aM,” Lab on a Chip 18, 2291-2299, July 2018. https://doi.org/10.1039/C8LC00452H  *equal contribution