Lab on a Chip Blog

We are delighted to welcome our new Advisory Board members!

Yoshinobu Baba – Nagoya University

Yoshinobu is a Professor in the Department of Advanced Medical Science Graduate School of Medicine at Nagoya University. His major area of interest is nanobiosicence and nanobiotechnology for omics, systems biology, cancer diagnosis, cancer therapy regenerative medicine, and molecular in vivo imaging.

Jean-Christophe Baret – University of Bordeaux, France

Jean-Christophe is a Professor at the University of Bordeaux. His research group focuses on the fundamental study of interfaces in liquid systems through the dynamics of droplets, bubbles and emulsions.

Anja Boisen – Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

Anja is a Professor in the Department of Micro- and Nanotechnology at the Technical University of Denmark.  Her research group focuses on development and application of micro and nano mechanical sensors and microfabricated solutions for oral drug delivery. The group also explores integration of micro and nano sensors onto centrifugal microfluidic platforms.

Qun Fang – Zhejiang University

Qun is a Qiushi Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Zhejiang University, and the Director of Institute of Microanalytical Systems at Zhejiang University. His research interests include microfluidic analysis, capillary electrophoresis, flow injection analysis, and miniaturization of analytical instruments, especially the development of automated and high-throughput droplet-based microfluidic analysis and screening techniques.

Martin A. M Gijs – EPFL, Switzerland

Martin is Professor in the School of Engineering at EPFL and Head of the Laboratory of Microsystems. His present interests are in developing technologies for novel magnetic devices, new microfabrication technologies for microsystems fabrication in general and the development and use of microsystems technologies for microfluidic and biomedical applications in particular.

Noo Li Jeon – Seoul National University, South Korea

Noo Li is a Professor at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University. His research group use cell culture and microfluidic techniques to investigate biological processes.

Gwo-Bin Lee – National Tsing Hua University

Gwo-Bin is a Professor at the National Tsing Hua University. His research interests are on nano-biotechnology, micro/nanofluidics and their biomedical applications. He is currently developing integrated micro/nano systems incorporated with nano/biotechnology for a variety of applications, including fast diagnosis of infectious diseases, screening of biomarkers for cancer and cardiovascular diseases, and optofluidics.

Hang Lu – Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Hang is a Professor at the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research group work at the interface of engineering and biology. They engineer BioMEMS and microfluidic devices to address questions across a variety of disciplines.

Adrian Neild – Monash University, Australia

Adrian is an Associate Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Monash University. His research interest are focused on non-linear ultrasound including acoustic radiation forces and acoustic streaming as well as viscosity, microfluidic systems, micron-scale particle and biological cell handling, air-coupled ultrasound, transducer design, non-destructive testing, and finite-element analysis.

Nicole Pamme – University of Hull, UK

Nicole is a Professor in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Hull. Following her PhD, where she worked on single particle analysis in microfluidic chips, Nicole spent a year in Japan, working as an independent research fellow in the International Centre for Young Scientists (ICYS) at the National Institute for Materials Science. She has been at the University of Hull since 2005 and is currently Director of Research.

Sámuel Sánchez – Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia, Spain

Sámuel leads the lab-in-a-tube and nanorobotic biosensors research group at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia. His research focuses on the design of miniaturized devices that bridge multidisciplinary fields from material science, chemistry and biology. His research group studies a broad range of phenomena occurring at the interface between materials and biology, from fundamental studies to applications.

Anderson Shum – University of Hong Kong, China

Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the University of Hong Kong. His research area covers microscaled fluid dynamics, biomedical applications of microfluidics, eye-on-a-chip, and all-aqueous microfluidics; and his  main area of expertise include droplet microfluidics, emulsion-templated materials and microscaled interfacial phenomena.

Please join us in welcoming Dino Di Carlo, Piotr Garstecki and Shoji Takeuchi to the Lab on  a Chip Editorial Board!

Dino Di Carlo, University of California at Los Angeles

Dino is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles. He also Directs the Cancer Nanotechnology Program of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research group are currently focusing on exploiting unique physics, microenvironment control, and the potential for automation associated with miniaturized systems for applications in basic biology, medical diagnostics, and cellular engineering.

Piotr Garstecki, Polish Academy of Sciences

Piotr is a Professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences. He currently leads the Research Group of Microfluidics and Complex Fluids. The group conducts research on fundamental aspects of the physics of soft matter systems and develops microfluidic tools for chemistry and biology.

Shoji Takeuchi, University of Tokyo

Shoji is a Professor in the Center for International Research on Integrative Biomedical Systems (CIBiS), Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), University of Tokyo. Since 2008, he has been a director of Collaborative Research Center for Bio/Nano Hybrid Process at IIS. His current research interests include 3D tissue fabrication, implantable devices, artificial cells/lipid bilayer systems, and biohybrid MEMS.

At Lab on a Chip we are very pleased to announce our newest Associate Editor – Petra Dittrich!

Petra is Associate Professor for Bioanalytics at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering. Her research in the field of lab-on-chip-technologies focuses on the miniaturization of high-sensitivity devices for chemical and biological analyses, and microfluidic-aided organization of materials.

Petra’s research group develop miniaturized devices (lab-on-chip technology or microfluidics) for applications in the life sciences. Their interdisciplinary approach combines chemical, physical, biological and engineering aspects of microfluidics-based technology. You can find out more about her research on her homepage: http://www.dittrich.ethz.ch/

Petra is now handling papers so submit your paper to her today!

The fifth Introducing series post is all about new Editorial Board member David Walt. We’re very pleased to welcome David to the board and here he introduces his background and research vision:

David R. Walt is Robinson Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Genetics, and Professor of Oral Medicine at Tufts University and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor.  Dr. Walt is the Founding Scientist of Illumina, Inc. and has been a Director and Chairman of its Scientific Advisory Board since 1998. Dr. Walt is also the Founding Scientist of Quanterix Corporation and has been a Director and Chairman of its Scientific Advisory Board since 2007. He has received numerous national and international awards and honors for his fundamental and applied work in the field of optical sensors and arrays.  Dr. Walt is a member of the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from Stony Brook University. 

We’re very happy to welcome new Editorial Board member Mark Gilligan in this week’s Introducing series post. He describes his unusual path from aerospace engineering to commercial successes in developing  microfluidics for an ever-increasing range of applications:

Mark studied Aerospace engineering at Cranfield, and after that worked in both Formula 1 for Benetton and Aerospace for BAe Commercial aircraft. Mark then went on to work for Pitney Bowes in the US developing franking machines and Philips in the Netherlands developing the first DVD drives. Then in 1997 Mark moved to work for a technology consulting consultancy called The Technology Partnership (TTP) and started working on the interfaces between Engineering and Life Sciences. One major project at TTP was called Myriad, and involved working in conjunction with seven pharmaceutical companies to develop highly automated robotic systems for parallel chemistry to make potential drug candidates. The outcome of this project was sold to Mettler Toledo and a new business unit was formed and built with Mark leading the R&D of that new company. Once this company was built in 2000, Mark moved into New Ventures for Mettler, investigating and acquiring businesses in automated chemistry.

In 2001 Mark left Mettler Toledo to found Syrris, which has now grown to be a world leader in cutting edge tools and technologies for synthetic chemistry, including microreactors. As Syrris grew, a number of multipurpose microfluidics technologies were developed and an increasingly diverse range of partners sought to access them. This lead to the formation of Dolomite Microfluidics in 2005, which then won a large UK government grant to create a Microfluidic Application Centre. This trend of starting new brands has carried on and now Mark is the CEO of the Blacktrace Group of companies which includes Syrris, Dolomite and a number of other brands which are all collectively focussed on Productisation of Science.

For the third post in the Introducing series, here we’re very happy to introduce you to Editorial Board member Holger Becker and his research vision, including the development of lab on a chip technology to marketable products:

Dr Holger Becker is co-founder and CSO of microfluidic ChipShop GmbH. He obtained physics degrees from the University of Western Australia/Perth and the University of Heidelberg in 1990 and 1991 respectively. He started to work on miniaturized systems for chemical analysis during his PhD thesis at the Institute for Applied Physics at Heidelberg University, where he obtained his PhD on miniaturized chemical surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors in 1995. Between 1995 and 1997 he was a Research Associate at the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College in London with Prof. Andreas Manz. In 1998 he joined Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH where he was responsible for the realisation of a polymer-based microfabrication production line. Since then, he founded and led several companies in the field of microsystem technologies in medicine and the life sciences, for which he was nominated for the German Founder’s Prize in 2004. He lead the Industry Group of the German Physical Society between 2004 and 2009, and is the current chair of the SPIE ‘‘Microfluidics, BioMEMS and Medical Microsystems’’ conference as well as co-chair for MicroTAS 2013. Besides serving on the Editorial Board of “Lab-on-a-Chip”, he is a member of the General Advisory Board of MANCEF (Micro and Nanotechnology Commercialization Education Foundation), the expert panel on “Security Research” of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology as well as several other advisory boards and is acting as a regular reviewer of project proposals on a national and international level.

In the second in our Introducing series, we’re very pleased to introduce Editorial Board member Helene Andersson Svahn to readers of the blog!

Helene Andersson Svahn received her M. Sc. in Molecular Biotechnology from Uppsala University and her Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in 2001. In 2002-2005 Dr Andersson Svahn was Marketing Director at Silex Microsystems. In 2003 she was selected as member of the ‘TR100: Innovators under 35 who will create the future’ at MIT in USA. In 2005-2008 she was professor in Applied BIOMEMS at MESA+ Research Institute in Holland. In 2006 Prof Andersson Svahn was awarded a prestigious research fellowship from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2011-2012 she was the President of the Young Academy of Sweden and she is also a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Currently she is heading the Nanobiotechnology division at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and CEO of the startup company Picovitro AB (part time). Her main research focus is micro- and nano-fluidic devices for biotech and medical applications.

In the first of a short series of blog posts introducing the newest members of the Lab on a Chip Editorial Board, here we are very pleased to welcome Yoon-Kyoung Cho:

Yoon-Kyoung Cho received her B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from POSTECH in South Korea in 1992 and 1994, respectively. She continued her studies in the USA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where she received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1999 under the supervision of Prof. Steve Granick. Following her graduate work at UIUC, she returned to her homeland of South Korea and joined Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) as a senior research scientist. During her nine years at SAIT, she was involved in the research and development of a wide range of lab-on-a-chip technologies for biomedical applications, several of which have made it to the commercial marketplace.

In 2008, she returned to academia as an assistant professor in the school of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering at the Ulsan National Institute for Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea and was promoted to associate professor in 2010. Since 2009, she has been the chair of her department and the director of an ambitious and prestigious program, the World Class University (WCU) program, geared to perform international research with leading scientists at UNIST. Her current research interests include novel micro/nano fluidic devices for advanced diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and cell biology. She has had a prolific career in academia and industry, publishing more than 38 scientific papers and 107 registered patents to date. 

Below, Professor Cho shares her views on Lab on a Chip, and the research areas she is working in currently: