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M. Daniel Raftery
Professor—Analytical and Physical Chemistry
Email: raftery@purdue.edu
Phone: 765-494-6070
Office: BRWN 4150C
For Professor Raftery's individual Home Page click here.
Our research is focused on the following areas with important applications in human health and alternative energy.
Metabolomics: The combination of NMR, mass spectrometry and multivariate statistical analysis provides new ways to analyze complex samples such as biofluids. 
This field of metabolite profiling or "metabolomics" has significant implications for early disease detection and understanding systems biology. We are developing new methods for global and targeted profiling of a broad range of small molecule metabolites and for biomarker discovery. When combined, these metabolite biomarkers provide a means for early detection of several cancers and other diseases, as well as for monitoring therapy and for detecting disease recurrence.
Instrumentation Development: We have developed several advanced methods for indentifying and quantifying important molecules in complex fluids such as biofluids. New microcoil NMR methods, especially when combined with LC and pre-concentration or with chemical derivatization methods, provide unprecedented sensitivity gains for interrogating low concentration but important metabolites. In addition, a targeted MS approach for quantitative metabolite profiling of over 200 metabolites is being developed for high throughput analysis.
Solar Hydrogen Conversion: We also synthesize and study nanoparticle materials for the solar water splitting. Doped titania and other semiconductor metal oxide materials have the potential for creating hydrogen with high efficiency for use as a fuel source. We synthesize and characterize a range of these materials to understand their surface chemistry at a fundamental level, and to improve their performance.
Education
A.B., 1984, Harvard College; Ph.D., 1991, University of California, Berkeley; NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, 1992-94, University of Pennsylvania.Recognitions
- University Faculty Scholar, 2006-2011
- Editorial Board, Solid State NMR , 2005
- Visiting Professor, Pierre and Marie Curie Institute, Paris, France, 2004
- Visiting Professor, Universidad Autonoma, Madrid, Spain, 2001
- Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, 1999-01
- NSF CAREER Development Award, 1998-2002
- Cottrell Scholars Award, 1997
- AT&T/Lucent Technologies Industrial Ecology Faculty Fellow, 1995-97
Selected Publications
- Shanaiah N.;Desilva, M. A.;Gowda, G. A. N.;Raftery, M. A.;Hainline, B. E.;Raftery, D., Class selection of amino acid metabolites in body Fluids using chemical derivatizaflon and their enhanced C-13 NMR . Proceedings of the National Academy of S 2007 , 104 , 11540-11544.
- Z. Pan, and D. Raftery, Combining NMR Spectroscopy and Mass Spectrometery in Metabolomics . Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 2006 , , On Line.
- D. Djukovic, S. Liu, I. Henry, B. Tobias, and D. Raftery, Signal Enhancement in HPLC/Micro-Coil NMR Using Pre-Concentration Column Trapping . Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 2006 , 78, 7154-60.