Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Design and Advanced Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics for Ubiquitious Diagnostics

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

1266193 University of California-Irvine (UC-I); Abraham Lee 1266195 University of Cincinnati; Ian Papautsky The proposed center will develop low-power, automated, self-contained, mass-produced micro-devices capable of multi-step biochemical assessments. University of California, Irvine (UC-I) and the University of Cincinnati (UCINN) are collaborating to establish the proposed center, with UCI as the lead institution. The goal of the proposed Center is to develop advanced manufacturing technologies for ubiquitious diagnostics and assessment of the environment, agriculture, and human health. The goals of this proposed Center will be achieved via three coordinated basic and applied research thrust areas: Manufacturable Processes and Materials, Sample Processing and Detection, and Integration and Control Systems. This Center would result in (a) advances that can be transferred to industrial stakeholders for product development, (b) technologies that feed into government laboratories for further application-specific development, and (c) the education and training of a cadre of specialized scientists and engineers skilled in low-cost manufacturable microfluidic biochip innovation. Broader impacts include competitive recruitment mechanisms and attractive cross-disciplinary collaborative graduate research opportunities to engage excellent students, including members of underrepresented groups. In addition to traditional and conferences, knowledge dissemination includes an open-source "microfluidic function library" containing design specifications for microfluidic circuits and interchangeable components organized by application and chip manufacturing processes. Scalable prototyping processes also will be disseminated to academia and industry, including established companies and entrepreneurs, with a goal to dramatically reduce the learning curve and streamline the idea-to-product process.