Sensors Webinar | Thermal Biosensing Methods
Sensors Webinar | Thermal Biosensing Methods
Part of the MDPI Sensors Webinar series
22 October 2025
Biosensors, Chemosensors, Interface Thermal Resistance, Label-free Transducer Principles
Welcome from the Chair
27th Sensors Webinar
Thermal Biosensing Methods
Dear colleagues,
If you are working on biosensors—and many of you are—you will already be familiar with a variety of transducers established using, for example, optical, electronic, electrochemical, and microgravimetric techniques. In this webinar, we will introduce the principle of thermal biosensors, produced, for example, using the heat-transfer method (HTM), which employs temperature gradients and thermal currents to probe biomolecular interactions. In principle, the concept is rather simple: you need a heat source and two thermometers, and you are ready to detect, for example, bacteria, virus particles, or mutations in DNA. Of course, this does not work without bioreceptors, but when a suitable receptor is included, the HTM becomes sensitive to an incredibly broad range of biotargets. There are also receptor-free HTM applications, such as monitoring cell proliferation and evaluating the efficacy of antimicrobials at the cell culture level.
We are grateful to MDPI for organizing this webinar, and a special thanks goes to today’s three speakers: they not only pioneered the basic HTM principle but also continue to advance it toward real-life applications in medical diagnostics, food safety, and environmental monitoring.
I wish you all a pleasant and fruitful webinar.
Best regards,
Patrick Wagner, KU Leuven
Date: 22 October 2025
Time: 3:00 pm CEST | 9:00 am EDT
Webinar ID: 854 7887 2355
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Event Chairs
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Soft-Matter Physics and Biophysics Section, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan, Leuven, Belgium
Patrick obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the Technical University Darmstadt (Germany) in 1994. After a few more years as a postdoctoral researcher with a focus on magnetism and super-conductivity, he was appointed at Hasselt University (Belgium) as a professor in 2001. At UHasselt, he made a big thematical switch from solid-state physics to biosensors: He simply loves developing innovative bioanalytical applications for which researchers from various dis-ciplines work complementarily together. While using impedance spectroscopy as an estab-lished transducer for biosensors, Patrick’s team discovered by serendipity the heat-transfer method HTM. In brief, this means that electrical currents are replaced by thermal currents, opening many new and unexpected biosensing possibilities. In 2014, he joined KU Leuven, where his team is working on sensor-based solutions for medical diagnostics, food safety, and environmental monitoring. Since 2022, he is the head of the laboratory for Physics of Soft Matter and Biophysics, and he is currently also serving as an associate editor in the biosensor section of MDPI Sensors.
Keynote Speakers
Sensor Engineering Department, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Bart van Grinsven received a masters degree in bioelectronics and nanotechnology from Hasselt University in 2007. Then he was employed by TNO as a development engineer and returned to the BIOSensor group of Hasselt University in 2008. He successfully defended his PhD in physics in July 2012. After working as a post doctoral researcher in the same group he switched to Maastricht University to become a member of the Maastricht Science Programme where he obtained the position of Assistant Professor in 2014. After several years of combining research and education he helped building up the Sensor Engineering Department (SE) as part of the new Faculty of Science and Engineering where he obtained the position of associate professor and department head in 2019.
School of Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Marloes graduated from Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands) with a degree in Chemical Engineering. For my PhD, she moved to Hasslet University in Belgium where she was part of the BIOSensors group of Prof Wagner. After postdoctoral research positions at Hasselt University and Queen Mary Universty of London, she commenced her independent research career at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK in 2015. Marloes became a Professor at Newcastle University in 2023 and at the end of that year, joined the Chemical Engineering department of the University of Manchester as a Chair (Professor) in Engineering Biology. Her research group focuses on the development of advanced functional polymer materials to solve complex healthcare problems such as in the field of biosensors, bioelectronics, and drug delivery. Marloes has been granted five patents on novel biosensor platforms, is a key science communicator, and has won the RSC Macro Group UK Early Career Award in 2024 (awarded to a polymer scientist with great promise for the future).
Institute for Materials Research (IMO), Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Limburg, Belgium
Prof. Dr. Ir. Ronald Thoelen is a professor at the Faculty of Engineering Technology of Hasselt University and head of the Biomedical Device Engineering (BDE) group within the Institute for Materials Research (imo-imomec). His research focuses on the design and integration of elec-trical impedance and thermal-based biosensors in microfluidic and lab-on-chip platforms for applications ranging from point-of-care diagnostics to process monitoring. He has developed novel thermal sensing approaches for detecting molecular interactions, monitoring biological processes, and controlling temperature-sensitive microfluidic operations. Prof. Thoelen has led and contributed to numerous national and international projects, advancing biosensing tech-nologies in healthcare, food safety, and environmental monitoring, with a strong focus on translating fundamental concepts into robust, portable diagnostic systems.
Registration
This is a FREE webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. Registrations with academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.
Certificates of attendance will be delivered to those who attend the live webinar.
Can’t attend? Register anyway and we’ll let you know when the recording is available to watch.
Program
|
Speaker/Presentation |
Time in CEST |
Time in EDT
|
|
Patrick Wagner (Chair) Thermal Biosensors – From Calorimeters to HTM and its Variants |
3:00-3:10 pm |
9:00-9:10 am |
|
Bart van Grinsven (Speaker 1) DNA and Spaghetti: Finding Nice Things in Funny Data |
3:10-3:30 pm |
9:10-9:30 am |
|
Marloes Peeters (Speaker 2) Can a Smart Thermometer Detect Heart Attacks? |
3:30-3:50 pm |
9:30-9:50 am |
|
Ronald Thoelen (Speaker 3) Thermal Sensing Technologies for Advanced Biomedical and Microfluidic Applications
|
3:50-4:10 pm |
9:50-10:10 am |
|
Q&A |
4:10-4:25 pm |
10:10-10:25 am |
|
Patrick Wagner (Chair) Closing of Webinar |
4:25-4:30 pm |
10:25-10:30 am |
Relevant Special Issue
Feature Papers in Biosensors Section 2025
Special Issue Editors: Prof. Dr. Alexander Star, Prof. Dr Spyridon Kintzios and Prof. Dr. Patrick Wagner
Sponsors and Partners
Organizers
