From finger prick tests for blood glucose monitoring to industrial-scale drug screening in pharmaceutical companies, the ability to extract information from scarce volumes of samples quickly and cheaply is key to effective disease management and drug discovery. To this end, microfluidics offers major advantages over conventional liquid handling due to drastic reduction in reagent volume and the precise control of single cells, microtissues, and their microenvironments. The micro-nano-bio lab under the direction of Dr. Sindy Tang aims to develop innovative micro and nanoscale devices that harness mass transport phenomena to enable precise manipulation, measurement, and recapitulation of biological systems, in order to understand the "rules of life" and accelerate precision medicine and material design for a future with better health and environmental sustainability. Our approach involves building new tools to probe biological systems (from single cells to microtissues), and engineering smart materials, synthetic cells & tissues with properties that mimic some of the amazing properties biological systems have. Current research projects include:
- Understanding and accelerating the diagnosis of allergic diseases
- Biomechanics of single cell wound resilience
- Tools for advancing cancer research
- Bottom-up construction of biological systems
