Dr. Carney develops new platforms for early-stage cancer diagnosis by applying spectroscopic methods to characterize circulating exosomes and related extracellular vesicles (EVs). The Carney Lab builds cutting-edge Raman spectroscopy and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) tools to investigate the broad range of EVs, with the goal of more sensitively and specifically identifying tumor-associated subpopulations. Projects include single vesicle Raman analysis of EVs isolated from ovarian cancer patient biofluids, chemical and materials synthesis of next-generation plasmonic SERS nanoprobes and microfluidic chip-based platforms that isolate EVs from clinical samples.