Alma D. Castañeda is a technical specialist and a member of the chemistry team in Ballard Spahr’s Patents Group. Alma has experience drafting and prosecuting both U.S. and foreign patent applications in the chemical and biological arts, including pharmaceuticals and drug formulations, analytical methods, nanotechnology, polymer materials, comestibles, and medical devices. She also assists in the preparation of patentability, freedom-to-operate, and infringement analyses.
Alma’s doctoral work focused on the development of electrochemical biosensors. She also has expertise on nanoparticle synthesis and functionalization, analytical instrumentation, and surface chemistry. Her postdoctoral work investigated prebiotic phosphorylation of nucleosides in aerosols and in the presence of calcium carbonates.
Services
Professional Highlights
Publications
Co-author, “Prebiotic Phosphorylation of Uridine using Diamidophosphate in Aerosols,” Sci. Rep., 2019
Co-author, “A Stark Contrast to Modern Earth: Phosphate Mineral Transformation and Nucleoside Phosphorylation in an Iron- and Cyanide-Rich Early Earth Scenario,” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2019
Co-author, “Detection of microRNA by Electrocatalytic Amplification: a General Approach for Single-Particle Biosensing,” J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2017
Credentials
Education
University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D., Analytical Chemistry, 2017)
Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S., high honors, 2011)
Languages
Spanish
Proficient in French