Lab on a Chip Blog

Lab on a Chip and the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) were pleased to present the Art in Science award titled “Under the Looking Glass: Art from the World of Small Science” at the µTAS 2015 Conference.

The award highlights the aesthetic value in scientific illustrations while still conveying scientific merit. Many fantastic submissions were received this year with the winner selected by a panel of senior scientists who attended the conference.

And the winner is…

“Through Warhol’s eyepiece” photographed by Matteo Cornaglia, Laboratory of Microsystems, EPFL, Switzerland.

The winning artwork, “Through Warhol’s eyepiece” photographed by Matteo Cornaglia from the Laboratory of Microsystems, EPFL in Switzerland, was created by on-chip multi-dimensional imaging of C.elegans embryogenesis as observed through an Andy Warhol microscope, equipped with a 63x oil immersion objective and a pop art optical filter. For the first time, automated longitudinal studies of C.elegans embryos are made possible by microfluidics. For this artwork, 20 embryos are isolated from an on-chip worm culture upon egg laying and transferred into dedicated micro-incubators for long-term time-lapse imaging of the whole population at single-organism resolution. Each colour corresponds to a different instant of the same population development.

And the runners up are…

“Reflections of micro-ocean escaping” photographed by Maoxiang Guo, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

A tiny drop of liquid is encapsulated in a polymer microwell, covered with thin gold film. As the device is heated, the liquid is expanding, creating a bulge in the gold film, stress and ripples in the rest of the gold sheet.

“Microparticle Microgalaxy” photographed by Ghulam Destgeer, Department of Mechanical Engineering (KAIST), South Korea.

Microparticles are manipulated inside a sessile droplet of water placed on top of a vibrating acoustofluidic platform. Surface acoustic waves leaking into the water drive the concentration of the larger diameter (yellow) particles while smaller (blue) particles remain scattered in the background. The particles resembles stars spread in a celestial galaxy.

A big thank you to all the contributors this year.

Lab on a Chip and Dolomite Microfluidics are pleased to announce Dan Kirby and the Ducrée Lab, Dublin City University the winner of the 2015 µTAS Video Competition supported by the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS).

At the µTAS conference in October 2015 Lab on a Chip Executive Editor, Sarah Ruthven (right) and Dolomite Microfluidics Group Chief Executive Officer, Mark Gilligan (left) presented Dan Kirby (centre) with the award and a $2500 gift certificate to spend on Dolomite equipment.

Registered µTAS participants were invited to submit short videos with a scientific or educational focus. Videos could be fun, artistic or just surprising and unusual to be in contention for the prize. The winners, the Ducrée Lab, produced a video titled “Spin me right round” focussing on centrifugal microfluidics. They recreated a classic 80’s music video in the lab to highlight the new areas of research in lab-on-a-disc platforms. They hope that viewers enjoy the “new spin” they have put on biomedical diagnostics!

Thank you very much to all the participants for submitting such high quality entries.

Congratulations to the Ducrée Lab!

The Productizing Science© Competition provides entrants with the opportunity to take advantage of Dolomite’s experience in developing successful scientific products. Entrants were asked to submit an abstract detailing their innovative scientific concept, and an outline of how the concept could be commercially successful.

Out of all the high quality entries received, Zimmertech excelled with their electrochemical sensor development kit. This innovative concept shows real potential for benefiting the microfluidics market and will aid the development of portable hand-held diagnostic devices for disease detection, allowing laboratory-based assays to be performed in the field.

“We are delighted to announce Zimmertech’s Electrochemical sensor development kit as the winner  of the Dolomite and Lab on a Chip‘s Productizing Science® Competition 2015. Zimmertech’s technology will be combined with Dolomite’s outstanding R&D capabilities to develop an easy to use product for rapid investigation of electrochemical sensor concepts and assays.  We look forward to commercialising the product in 2016 and thus truly Productizing Science®.”

Mike Hawes, Chief Commercial Officer, Dolomite Microfluidics

Congratulations to Zimmertech AS and thank you to everyone who took part in the competition!