Integrated microfluidics, photonics, and acoustics for biomedical system-on-a-chip

Professor Yuhwa Lo
ECE Department
UCSD

Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 3:30pm
Engr IV Room 67-124

Abstract
Medical diagnostic devices are beginning to undergo the same rapid miniaturization that has been the trademark of electronics for decades. This trend towards miniaturization stems from the integration of microfluidics, photonics, and acoustics on the chip platform to detect, manipulate, and sort nanoscale biological samples. The research aims to create simple, low-cost assays and diagnostic devices that are more accessible to clinics and beyond.

In recent years, this 'point-of-care' mentality has been applied to main frame biodetection and processing systems such as flow cytometer or FACS (fluorescence-activated-cell-sorter), which is a commonly-used medical and research device for identifying individual cells, such as cancerous blood cells, and collecting mass statistics, for example lymphocyte ratios indicative of an HIV infection. This presentation will discuss recent progress towards creating a low-cost, portable flow cytometer on a microfluidic platform. Research areas covered include the demonstration of integrated optofluidic lab-on-a-chip as well as single cell sorting device for applications including HIV/AIDS monitoring, blood analysis, bacteria detection, adult stem cell separation, cancer stem cell separation, single-cell genotyping, human microbiome, and oceanic microbiome.

Biography
Yuhwa Lo received his PhD in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1987. He was a Member of Technical Staff at Bellcore from 1988 to 1990. In 1991, he joined the faculty of School of Electrical Engineering, Cornell University as an Assistant Professor and then became an Associated Professor. He became a professor of ECE Department of UCSD since 1999, and the director of the Nano3 Facility of Calit2 since 2006. His research covers optoelectronic materials and devices, single photon detectors, and more recently, microfluidics, biophotonics, nanophotonics, and medical devices for life sciences and biomedicine. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and the IEEE.