Chemical and biological detection.

The general public, government, and industry have an ever-expanding appetite to understand the chemical and biological constituents in their environment. Chemical and biological sensors have obvious implications to human health wherein more precise and economical tests at early stages enable the successful early diagnosis and treatment of a disease or other conditions. Sensor triggered alarms can improve occupational safety and homeland security as well as continuously monitor buildings for autonomous dynamic ventilation. This insatiable desire is driving development of new modalities for the creation of chemical and biological sensors and opportunities abound with the confluence of new functional transduction materials and miniaturized instrumentation. For example, lasers that were once benchtop systems are now hand-held battery operated devices. Exploitation of the biological–materials interface and user-friendly computational resources are empowering innovations, harnessing natural processes, and transforming complex, multidimensional sensor inputs into useful data. This issue of Chemical Society Reviews highlights a number of exciting developments in chemical/biological sensors from selected leading authorities. Researchers who are actively engaged in chemical and biological sensors or analytical science and a University of the Sciences, 600 South 43rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4495, USA. E-mail: c.mcewen@usciences.edu b Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, North Carolina State University and UNC-Chapel Hill, EB3, Raleigh, NC 27695-7115, USA. E-mail: fsligler@ncsu.edu, fsligler@bme.unc.edu c Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. E-mail: tswager@mit.edu