MicroTAS 2024 | 13-17 October 2024

Plenary Speakers

NANOPHOTONIC LAB-ON-A-CHIP SYSTEMS FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
Hatice Altug
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), SWITZERLAND

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Emerging healthcare needs and initiatives are demanding breakthrough advancements in diagnostic and bioanalytical tools. Towards this goal, our lab is developing next-generation nanophotonic lab-on-a-chip systems offering high performance in precision, response time, integration, throughput portability and affordability. This talk will presentsome of our recent works such as an AI-aided optofluidic mid-infrared sensor capable of differentiating misfolded forms of disease proteins, nanophotonic single-cell microarrays that can enable high-throughput spatiotemporal monitoring of extracellular secretion and biosensing approaches for long-term continuous monitoring of biomolecules.

TOOLS TO ANALYZE VERY FEW, AND VERY MANY MOLECULES
Ulf Landegren
Uppsala Universitet, SWEDEN

BUILDING VASCULARIZED KIDNEY TISSUES FOR DRUG TESTING, DISEASE MODELING, AND THERAPEUTIC USE
Jennifer A. Lewis
Harvard University, USA

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My talk will describe our recent efforts to generate vascularized organoids in vitro that exhibit enhanced maturation and function for both drug testing and disease modeling. Next, I will describe the scalable generation of vascularized organ-specific tissues for therapeutic use via sacrificial writing in functional tissue (SWIFT). Though broadly applicable, I will highlight our recent work on engineering human kidney tissues.

ORGANIC NANOPARTICLES FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS
Bin Liu
National University of Singapore, SINGAPORE

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Organic electronic materials play important roles in modern electronic devices such as light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and transistors. Upon interaction with light, these optically active materials can undergo different photophysical and photochemical pathways, providing unique opportunities for optimization of light emission via radiative decay, heat generation via nonradiative decay, and singlet oxygen production or phosphorescence emission via intersystem crossing, all of which open alternative opportunities for their applications in sensing, imaging, and therapy. In this talk, we discuss all the pathways that determine the optical properties of high-performance organic electronic materials, focusing on the optimization of each pathway for photogeneration and relaxation of electronic excited states. We further examine nanoparticle (NP) fabrication techniques tailored to macromolecules and small molecules to render them into NPs with optimized size and distribution for biomedical applications and endow organic electronic materials with water dispersibility and biocompatibility. Lastly, we illustrate the in vitro and in vivo applications of some representative organic electronic materials after optimization of each relaxation pathway.

NONINVASIVE PRENATAL AND CANCER DETECTION BY PLASMA DNA ANALYSIS: FROM DREAM TO REALITY
Yuk Ming "Dennis" Lo
Chinese University of Hong Kong, HONG KONG

MICROFLUIDIC TOTAL ANALYSIS SYSTEMS FOR THE SKIN
John A. Rogers
Northwestern University, USA

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Emerging classes of thin, soft microfluidic systems enable capture, storage and on-device chemical analysis of microliter volumes of eccrine sweat as it arrives at the surface of the skin. Several types of these skin-interfaced technologies have appeared in the recent literature, with applications in sports/fitness, health diagnostics and chemical exposure. This talk describes the key ideas and presents some of the most recent device examples.

Hot Topic Keynote Speakers

Artificial Intelligence in Microfluidics

VIRTUAL STAINING OF LABEL-FREE TISSUE USING DEEP LEARNING
Aydogan Ozcan
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

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Deep learning techniques create new opportunities to revolutionize tissue staining methods by digitally generating histological stains using trained neural networks, providing rapid, cost-effective, accurate and environmentally friendly alternatives to standard chemical staining methods. These deep learning-based virtual staining techniques can successfully generate different types of histological stains, including immunohistochemical stains, from label-free microscopic images of unstained samples by using, e.g., autofluorescence microscopy, quantitative phase imaging (QPI) and reflectance confocal microscopy. Similar approaches were also demonstrated for transforming images of an already stained tissue sample into another type of stain, performing virtual stain-to-stain transformations. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of our recent work on the use of deep neural networks for label-free tissue staining, also covering their biomedical applications.

TOWARD PETABYTE-SCALE OPTOFLUIDIC IMAGING CYTOMETRY
Kevin Tsia
University of Hong Kong, HONG KONG

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This talk will discuss the latest frontier of optofluidic imaging cytometry achieving petabyte-scale analysis through the fusion of ultrafast imaging, microfluidics and deep learning. This integration unlocks unprecedented specificity and sensitivity of single-cell morphological profiling that were once inconceivable - offering transformative insights and new cell-based assay strategies for biological research, clinical diagnostics, and drug discovery.

Energy and Environment

CAN MICROFLUIDICS ADDRESS KEY ISSUES IN THE ENVIRONMENT, ENERGY, AND AGRICULTURE?
Chuck Henry
Colorado State University, USA

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There is widespread interest in understanding how human activity affects the world around us as well as the impact of environmental pollution on human health. On one hand, human activity causes significant environmental damage through both point and non-point source pollution with long-term ecological impacts. On the other hand, pollutants in the environment significantly impact human health over the entire globe. Microfluidic devices are positioned to help provide critical data for both problems.

David A. Weitz
Harvard University, USA

Organ-on-a-Chip

MICROENGINEERED BIOMIMICRY OF HUMAN PHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
Dongeun (Dan) Huh
University of Pennsylvania, USA

MODELING NEUROLOGICAL DISEASE: UNDERSTANDING THE TRANSPORT MECHANISMS AND PATHWAYS FOR THE CLEARANCE OF AMYLOID BETA FROM THE BRAIN
Roger D. Kamm
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

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Neurodegenerative disease is a major factor inflicting our aging population. Many processes contribute to disease, but one critical factor is the accumulation of toxic protein aggregates in the brain due to either increased cell secretion or impaired clearance. The brain has multiple exit paths for these factors, but the relative importance of each has been difficult to assess. In vitro models can help to elucidate the important egress routes and could help identify new therapeutic approaches.

Wearables and Continuous Sensing

WEARABLE RECONFIGURABLE METAMATERIALS AND ORIGAMI-INSPIRED IMPLANTABLE SENSORS FOR HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACES
Firat Güder
Imperial College London, UK

Ali Javey
University of California, Berkeley, USA