The Team

Vickie DeRose

PI, Core Faculty 

Vickie is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oregon. She is an associate member of the UO Materials Research Institute and Institute of Molecular Biology, and associate faculty member and former Faculty Fellow of the Knight Campus.  From 2017-2019 she served as Associate Vice President for Faculty Development in the Division of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Oregon, and continues equity and inclusion efforts in STEM with the UO IChange program. Her research interests are inspired by the intricate relationships between biological systems and metal ions, and her lab approaches this topic with tools from synthetic chemistry, molecular biology, and chemical biology. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley, and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University. She moved to the University of Oregon in 2006 as Full Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry after ten years on faculty in the chemistry department at Texas A&M University. She is a Cottrell Scholar, an NSF CAREER Awardee, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a UO Fund for Faculty Excellence awardee, and was the inaugural Distinguished Women in Science Lecturer at Stanford University. She has held several elected positions in national scientific societies. As Director of the NRT, her goal is to support participants in exciting new training and research collaborations.

DeRose Group Page

Darren W. Johnson

Co-PI, Core Faculty 

Darren is a Professor of Chemistry, Director of the Materials Science Institute, and the Bradshaw and Holzapfel Research Professor in Transformational Science and Mathematics at the University of Oregon. He was an inaugural Faculty Fellow in UO’s new Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and co-founded the Molecular Probes and Sensors Track in the Knight Campus Graduate Internship Program, where he currently co-administers the Immersion Lab and Lens of the Market programming. His research draws inspiration from challenges in environmental, biomedical, and sustainable chemistry, and research in the group uses supramolecular chemistry as a tool to explore a variety of problems in self-assembly, molecule/ion recognition, and inorganic cluster synthesis.  Darren was co-founder of SupraSensor Technologies, a UO spinout that sought to commercialize remote sensors for nutrient management in precision agriculture and was acquired by The Climate Corporation in 2016.  He is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Inclusion Phenomena, serves on the editorial board for Supramolecular Chemistry, has co-authored 150 peer-reviewed publications, is co-inventor on over 15 pending and issued patents, and is an inaugural Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. He obtained his BS in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, his Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley in 2000, and he was an NIH post-doctoral researcher at the Scripps Research Institute from 2001-2003.

Johnson Group Page

Mike Pluth

Co-PI, Core Faculty 

Mike is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon. He is also a Member of the Materials Science Institute, a Faculty Associate of the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, and an Associate Member of the Institute of Molecular Biology. Mike is a co-founder of the Molecular Probes and Sensors Track in the Knight Campus Graduate Internship Program and co-director of the Molecular Probes and Sensors for Complex Environment NSF Training Program, where he currently teaches Chemical Biology. His research interests are thematically based on different aspects of molecular recognition at the interface of bioorganic and bioinorganic chemistry. Much of his lab focuses on developing chemical tools for investigating the roles of reactive sulfur species in biological systems. Mike has co-authored over 115 peer-reviewed publications, and is co-inventor on 6 pending or issued patents. He obtained his BS in Chemistry and Mathematics from the University of Oregon in 2004, his Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley in 2008, and was an NIH post-doctoral fellow at MIT from 2008-2011.

Pluth Group Page

Keat Ghee Ong 

Keat Ghee Ong joined the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact at the University of Oregon in August 2019 as a professor. Prior to that, he was the Portage Health Foundation Endowed Professor and Associate Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. Ong received his PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2000 from the University of Kentucky. Keat Ghee Ong has an internationally recognized research program in the areas of implantable sensors, wireless sensors, biosensors, and magnetoelastic materials. He was involved in the development and implementation of a number of wireless sensor technologies including the magnetoelastic resonance sensors and inductive-capacitive resonance circuit sensors for biomedical applications. Currently, Ong focuses on the development of “smart implants”, which are based on wireless sensor/actuator platforms that not only can monitor physiological conditions in real-time but also react and adapt to changes for improving treatment outcomes. He is also working on chemical and biological sensors for tracking cell growth in bioreactors and in vivo. Ong has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals, most of them in engineering-oriented journals such as IEEE Sensors and Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. Ong’s research activities are supported by a number of federal agencies, organizations, and industrial partners such as the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Defense, etc.

Ong Group Page