Radislav of GE Advanced Research Center

Tropical butterflies are a bright display of photonic engineering in nature. Their iridescence
originates from the interference and diffraction of light within tree-like nanostructures on their scales,
inspiring technological innovations in solar cells, displays, fabrics, and other areas. We are inspired by the
design principles of these photonic nanostructures to boost performance of gas sensors because existing
gas sensors often degrade their performance in complex environments. Thus, new sensing concepts are
required to improve sensor selectivity and stability.
In this lecture, we analyse capabilities of natural photonic nanostructures as sensors for detection
of different gases and the origins of these capabilities. Our acquired knowledge from studies of these
natural nanostructures allows us to develop our design rules to fabricate sensing nanostructures for needed
gas selectivity for numerous gas monitoring scenarios at room and high temperatures for industrial,
environmental, homeland protection, medical, and other applications.
Our design rules for selective gas sensors bring a multivariable perspective for sensing, where
selectivity is achieved within a single nanostructured sensing unit, rather than from an array of separate
sensors. By utilizing individual nanostructured sensors rather than sensor arrays we also improved sensor
stability by eliminating independent aging factors in separate sensors in their arrays. Our existing and
new machine learning tools further advanced our sensor designs and performance in multi-gas detection.
These new multi-gas sensing capabilities provide an affordable technical solution for monitoring
of emissions of greenhouse and other gases in urban and industrial environments. Such technical solution
is mathematically not feasible using conventional single-output sensor designs. The societal impact of
these results is in opening opportunities for more proactive developments of several types of multivariable
gas sensors in diverse emerging monitoring applications, ranging from urban pollution and industrial
safety to medical diagnostics and homeland protection.

Biography:

Radislav A. Potyrailo is a Principal Scientist at GE Vernova Advanced Research Center. He received an
Optoelectronics degree from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (1985) and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (1998). At GE Vernova Advanced Research Center Dr. Potyrailo
has been directing programs on designs of physical transducers, sensing materials with multi-response
mechanisms, data analytics, and system engineering of microanalytical instrumentation. His passion is to
bring innovative sensing systems from laboratory feasibility studies to field validations and
commercialization. Dr. Potyrailo has been serving as a technical lead on GE R&D programs transitioned
to GE businesses or GE partners for commercialization. Examples include optical multi-parameter
chemical sensor for GE Water, wireless gas sensors for GE Oil & Gas, multi-parameter oil sensor for GE
Renewable Energy, and GE Ventures start-up company on radio-frequency sensors. Dr. Potyrailo has
been serving as a Principal Investigator on programs funded by AFRL, ARPA-E, DARPA, DHS, DOE,
DTRA, NIH, NIOSH, NETL, TSWG, and other US Government agencies. He is the initiator and a co-
organizer of the First Gordon Research Conference on Combinatorial and High Throughput Materials
Science and serves as an editor of the Springer-Nature book series “Integrated Analytical Systems”. He is
the North America Regional Chair of International Society for Olfaction and Chemical Sensing and is the
Chair of the Device Working Group of the MEMS and Sensors Industry Group. Dr. Potyrailo summarized
most of his innovations in 160+ granted US Patents and publications (Google Scholar h-index 50+). He is
a recipient of the Prism Award by SPIE/Photonics Media (2011) for the development of a handheld
sensor system for industrial water, commercialized by GE Water and the AMA Innovation Award (2021)
for the development of networked greenhouse gas sensors, commercialized by BHGE. He is a SPIE
Fellow (2011) for achievements in fundamental breakthroughs in optical sensing and innovative
analytical systems and a recent IEEE Fellow (2023) for contributions to sensor technologies for gas
differentiation, interference rejection, and drift elimination, covering the whole electromagnetic spectrum
of his sensors. Dr. Potyrailo has been appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Sensors Council
for the period 2024-2026.

Address:United States