Archive for the ‘Board News’ Category

Introducing our new Editorial Board member – Professor Aaron Wheeler

We at Lab on a Chip are very pleased to announce our newest Editorial Board member – Professor Aaron Wheeler. Professor Wheeler is the Director of the Wheeler Microfluidics Laboratory at the University of Toronto. Below, he explains how he got into microfluidics, the challenges facing the field, and why he’s trying to be a hockey fan…

1. Please tell us a little about your research background.

I did my Ph.D. in chemistry working with Richard “Dick” Zare at Stanford University. I planned to work on projects related to capillary electrophoresis, but shortly after I started, Dick introduced me to a postdoc who was working in the “new” area of microfluidics. A few trips to the cleanroom later, I was hooked, and spent my time at Stanford developing microfluidic methods to analyze the contents of single cells. After completing my Ph.D., I went to work as a postdoc with Robin Garrell at UCLA, where I learned about the technique known popularly as “digital microfluidics” or “electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD)”. Robin introduced me to Chang-Jin “CJ” Kim and Joe Loo, and I spent two years having a blast bouncing between those three labs, developing interfaces between microfluidics and mass spectrometry. (Note to students – do a postdoc! This is the most fun you can have as a scientist.) I then began my career as an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, and now I spend most of my time hiding from my colleagues so that I can talk with my students about the fun they are having in the lab.

2. What first got you interested in lab on a chip technology as a research area?

As mentioned previously, a postdoc in my Ph.D. lab, Keisuke Morishima (now a professor at Osaka University), introduced me to microfluidics. The rest, as they say, is history.

3. What do you think the most significant advance in LOC technology has been in the last 5 years?

It is difficult to choose – there have been so many exciting advances. One that sticks out is the method developed by Mehmet Toner and colleagues for extracting rare cells from heterogeneous suspensions. When I speak with scientists outside of the lab-on-a-chip community, this is the topic that comes up most often.

4. What do you think is the biggest challenge facing lab on a chip researchers at the moment?

Our field continues to struggle with the translation of new technologies out of the labs of “microfluidics experts” and into the hands of the end-users.

5. What advice would you give to young researchers just starting their careers?

Be opportunistic! Academic scientists are required to write very detailed predictions of the future (i.e., grants). Good grantsmanship is of course an important skill, but I encourage young researchers to not be fooled into thinking that the science will follow the script! Initial hypotheses are often wrong (or the experiments to explore them turn out to be dull), but interesting phenomena can be found everywhere. Keep your eyes open and be ready to explore new and unexpected observations.

6. If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be doing?

Hmm. I think I would try to be a part of the US National Public Radio show, RadioLab. If you are not a listener, check it out. I am a huge fan.

7. If you could meet anyone from history, who would it be and why?

Difficult question. I think I will go with Charles Darwin. (True story: I once was thrown out of Westminster Abbey by a large priest with a deep, booming voice for trying to make a charcoal rubbing of Darwin’s gravestone.) Darwin was obviously a source of important, transformative ideas, but he was interested in problems big and small. Apparently, he had a great passion for earthworms (!), going as far as to evaluate their behaviour over several decades by sprinkling markers on the ground to measure worm-driven soil turnover rates. I imagine that with some coaxing, a conversation with Mr. Darwin would cover almost any topic under the sun (or under the soil, as the case may be).

8. What’s your favourite sports team?

I grew up in the state of North Carolina, where college basketball is almost a religion. (True story: one day in sixth grade, televisions on media carts were rolled into all of the classrooms, and we spent the day watching the NCAA college basketball tournament instead of learning about fractions or whatever we were supposed to be doing.) So, I was (and am) a fan of the University of North Carolina (UNC) – in my formative years, that team featured Michael Jordan. (Perhaps you have heard of him?) Since coming to Canada, I have tried to become a hockey fan. I would like to be a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs… but it is much easier to be a fan if your team actually wins some games.

We welcome Professor Wheeler’s expertise to the Board, and look forward to working with him over the coming months.

Professor Wheeler’s recent Lab on a Chip papers include:

Virtual microwells for digital microfluidic reagent dispensing and cell culture
Irwin A. Eydelnant, Uvaraj Uddayasankar, Bingyu ‘Betty’ Li, Meng Wen Liao and Aaron R. Wheeler
Lab Chip, 2012,12, 750-757
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC21004E

A digital microfluidic method for multiplexed cell-based apoptosis assays
Dario Bogojevic, M. Dean Chamberlain, Irena Barbulovic-Nad and Aaron R. Wheeler
Lab Chip, 2012,12, 627-634
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC20893H

A digital microfluidic method for dried blood spot analysis
Mais J. Jebrail, Hao Yang, Jared M. Mudrik, Nelson M. Lafrenière, Christine McRoberts, Osama Y. Al-Dirbashi, Lawrence Fisher, Pranesh Chakraborty and Aaron R. Wheeler
Lab Chip, 2011,11, 3218-3224
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20524B

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Lab on a Chip Board member and Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber receives 2011 Holst Medal

Last week the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University awarded its Founding Director and Lab on a Chip Editorial Board member, Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., the 2011 Holst Medal in recognition of his pioneering work exploring the cellular mechanisms that contribute to mechanical control of tissue and organ development, and his groundbreaking development of bioinspired technologies, ranging from organ-on-chip replacements for animal studies, to new engineering approaches for whole organ engineering.

The award was presented on December 16th at the High Tech Campus Eindhoven in the Netherlands during a ceremony at the close of the 2011 Holst Symposium, which focused on integrated heart repair. As the medal winner, Ingber also presented the 2011 Holst Memorial Lecture entitled “From Cellular Mechanotransduction to Organ Engineering.” Starting with an exploration of the role that cell structure and mechanics play in controlling tissue and organ development, Ingber’s lecture extended to provide a more comprehensive overview of his most recent innovations, including development of organ-on-chip microsystems technologies that recapitulate human organ functions, bioinspired materials that promote whole tooth organ formation, and injectable programmable nanotherapeutics that restore blood flow to occluded blood vessels.

“Donald Ingber has made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of the mechanobiology of cellular behavior,” said Joep Huiskamp, Secretary of the Holst Memorial Lecture Award Committee 2011, on its behalf. “Ingber’s recent development of a breathing lung-on-a-chip concept is an outstanding example of convergent technologies.”

This year’s Holst events were dedicated to the global health issue of heart disease, in recognition of its enormous emotional, medical, economical, and societal implications. The symposium brought together a few select leading international experts, including Wyss Institute core faculty member Kevin Kit Parker, Ph.D., to discuss key facets of heart disease, regeneration, and repair.  Parker’s work on engineering heart tissues recently featured on the Issue 24 cover of Lab on a Chip (see Ensembles of engineered cardiac tissues for physiological and pharmacological study: Heart on a chip).

Donald Ingber, together with Lab on a Chip Chair George Whitesides, will be guest editor of our final 10th Anniversary issue focusing on the USA which has the theme of translating research from the lab to the clinic, to be published next year.

Adapted from the Wyss Institute press release

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Free Lab on a Chip articles in Nature technology feature

Work published in Lab on a Chip features heavily in Nature’s latest Special Technology Feature ‘Tissue models: A living system on a chip‘.

The article, summarising the current state-of-the-art in creating living tissue models on chips, references work from LOC Editorial Board member Donald Ingber (Harvard Medical School) and LOC publications from Michael Shuler (Cornell),  John March (Cornell), Linda Griffith (MIT) and Axel Günther (University of Toronto).

We’ve made these great articles free to access for 2 weeks – why not take a look!

A microfluidic device for a pharmacokinetic–pharmacodynamic (PK–PD) model on a chip
Jong Hwan Sung, Carrie Kam and Michael L. Shuler
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 446-455

Microscale 3-D hydrogel scaffold for biomimetic gastrointestinal (GI) tract model
Jong Hwan Sung, Jiajie Yu, Dan Luo, Michael L. Shuler and John C. March
Lab Chip, 2010, 11, 389-392

Perfused multiwell plate for 3D liver tissue engineering
Karel Domansky, Walker Inman, James Serdy, Ajit Dash, Matthew H. M. Lim and Linda G. Griffith
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 51-58

A microfluidic platform for probing small artery structure and function

Axel Günther, Sanjesh Yasotharan, Andrei Vagaon, Conrad Lochovsky, Sascha Pinto, Jingli Yang, Calvin Lau, Julia Voigtlaender-Bolz and Steffen-Sebastian Bolz
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2341-2349
From our 2010 Emerging Investigators themed issue

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Stephen Quake wins Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship

Congratulations to Professor Steve Quake from Stanford University who is the 2010 winner of the Lab on a Chip/Corning Inc. Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship.

The prize was presented during the uTAS meeting held in Groningen, Netherlands this year. It is awarded annually to an early to mid-career scientist for extraordinary or outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems and includes a prize of $5000 ($2000 of which may be used to attend the µTAS Symposium).

Professor Quake’s research interests include biological automation tools, microfluidic large scale integration (demonstrating the first devices with thousands of integrated mechanical valves), single molecule DNA sequencing and much more.

Take a look at the webpage for more details about the prize jointly sponsored by Corning Inc.

View the photos and further information from about the 2010 uTAS meeting in Gronongen.

Read Steve Quake’s recent article in Lab on a Chip with reference to ‘biotic games’

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Lab on a Chip Chair Wins Cotton Medal

Lab on a Chip Editorial Board Chair, George Whitesides, will recieve the prestigious
2011 F. A. Cotton Medal at  a ceremony at Texas A&M University in April next year.

Professor Whitesides is the Woodford L. & Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University whose broad research interests range from affordable health diagnostics for the developing world to probing the mysteries of the origin of life. The Cotton Medal, awarded for excellence in chemical research, is in memory of the late F. Albert Cotton, Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M, and has been awarded annually since 1995.

Read Professor Whitesides recent Editorial in Lab on a Chip on ‘Solving problems’.

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