5.1 Special Day Session on Future and Emerging Technologies: Challenges for the Design of Microfluidic Devices: EDA for your Lab-on-a-Chip

Time	Label	Presentation Title Authors
08:30	5.1.1	POINT-OF-CARE DIAGNOSTICS 2.0: STANDARDS, DESIGN AUTOMATION, AND CONSUMER ELECTRONICS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF DIAGNOSTIC DEVICES Author: Emmanuel Delamarche, IBM Research, CH Abstract Diagnostics are ubiquitous in healthcare because they support prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Specifically, point-of-care diagnostics are particularly attractive for identifying diseases near patients, quickly, and in many settings and scenarios. One of our contribution to the field of microfluidics is the development of capillary-driven microfluidic chips for highly miniaturized immunoassays. In this presentation, I will review how to program capillary flow and encode specific functions to form microfluidic elements that can easily be assembled into self-powered devices for immunoassays, reaching unprecedented levels of precision for manipulating samples and reagents. I will also reflect on the fragmented approaches that our community has in developing microfluidic-based diagnostics, which is exacerbated by the fragmented nature of the in vitro diagnostic market. Standards, design automation, consumer electronic components, and smartphones may play a critical role in helping to rationalize our development and utilization of the next generation of point-of-care diagnostic devices.
09:00	5.1.2	DESIGN AUTOMATION IN MICROFLUIDICS: AN EXPERIMENTALIST'S PERSPECTIVE Author: William H. Grover, University of California, Riverside, US Abstract The field of microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices is nearly 40 years old. In that time, microfluidic technologies have found several important applications, primarily in bioscience research and healthcare. However, the overall spread of microfluidic technologies has been remarkably slow, especially into important fields like agriculture and environmental monitoring. Why is this? In this talk I will give my answers to this question, based on perspectives gained during 20 years of research in experimental microfluidics. I will share my lab's approaches at automating the design of microfluidic chips, including using randomly-designed chips and databases of chip simulations to automatically find custom designs for given applications. I'll also explain why chip design is only half the problem in microfluidics, and why the other half of the problem—chip fabrication—also deserves our attention. Finally, I will argue that the biggest source of pain for creators of microfluidic chips isn't the chip itself, but the off-chip equipment needed to control the chip, and I will share recent work by my group and others aimed at reducing or eliminating off-chip equipment by integrating its control functions onto the chip itself using "pneumatic logic."
09:30	5.1.3	CHEMOFLUIDICS: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES Author: Andreas Richter, Technische Universität Dresden, DE Abstract The lab-on-a-chip (LoC) concept was originally intended to introduce the irresistible and steady increasing performance of integrated circuit (IC) technology in microfluidics to automate and to parallelize the processes of complete chemical and biochemical laboratories on a single tiny microchip - a ground-breaking concept especially for life science and analytics. However, LoCs have not yet evolved revolutionary impact in microfluidics as known from microelectronics in information technology. The indisputable reason for that is the lack of scalability of the existing microfluidic platforms, especially the predominating microelectromechanical systems. The perspective solution of the basic challenge of scalability is hoped for the logic microfluidics, which is already named as "second breath of microfluidics" with revolutionary potential. The basic idea of this concept is to drastically reduce the effort for the off-chip control by integration of parts of the chip program by valve-based circuits. Currently there are two major approaches for. The micropneumatic logic microfluidics is technologically based on the multi-layer soft lithography and requires pressure-switchable valves, which derivate from pneumatic membrane valves. The second approach is the concept of chemo-fluidic logic microfluidics, the so-called chemofluidics. It is based on components with decision-making functionality for chemical information, the chemo-fluidic switches, chemostats and transistors and allows to fabricate integrated circuits by patterning of active material layers as known from microelectronics. Because of the chemical feedback the chip control is placed directly on the chip and exclusively controlled by chemical and other events. Since the components of the chip take their energy needed directly from the fluidic chemicals the chemo-fluidic logic chips are fully autonomous micro-systems processing their chip programs automatically and self-powered. A first set of hardware instructions including combinatorial logic gates, RS-flipflops and oscillators principally enabling to realise each more complex function is demonstrated. However, the concept of chemofluidics is still in its infancy. Many challenges on the levels of technology, design and system still await resolution.
10:00		End of session Coffee Break in Exhibition Area Coffee Breaks in the Exhibition Area On all conference days (Tuesday to Thursday), coffee and tea will be served during the coffee breaks at the below-mentioned times in the exhibition area (Terrace Level of the ICCD). Lunch Breaks (Großer Saal + Saal 1) On all conference days (Tuesday to Thursday), a seated lunch (lunch buffet) will be offered in the rooms "Großer Saal" and "Saal 1" (Saal Level of the ICCD) to fully registered conference delegates only. There will be badge control at the entrance to the lunch break area. Tuesday, March 20, 2018 Coffee Break 10:30 - 11:30 Lunch Break 13:00 - 14:30 Awards Presentation and Keynote Lecture in "Saal 2" 13:50 - 14:20 Coffee Break 16:00 - 17:00 Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Coffee Break 10:00 - 11:00 Lunch Break 12:30 - 14:30 Awards Presentation and Keynote Lecture in "Saal 2" 13:30 - 14:20 Coffee Break 16:00 - 17:00 Thursday, March 22, 2018 Coffee Break 10:00 - 11:00 Lunch Break 12:30 - 14:00 Keynote Lecture in "Saal 2" 13:20 - 13:50 Coffee Break 15:30 - 16:00

Time

Label

Presentation Title
Authors

08:30

5.1.1

POINT-OF-CARE DIAGNOSTICS 2.0: STANDARDS, DESIGN AUTOMATION, AND CONSUMER ELECTRONICS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF DIAGNOSTIC DEVICES
Author:
Emmanuel Delamarche, IBM Research, CH
Abstract
Diagnostics are ubiquitous in healthcare because they support prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Specifically, point-of-care diagnostics are particularly attractive for identifying diseases near patients, quickly, and in many settings and scenarios. One of our contribution to the field of microfluidics is the development of capillary-driven microfluidic chips for highly miniaturized immunoassays. In this presentation, I will review how to program capillary flow and encode specific functions to form microfluidic elements that can easily be assembled into self-powered devices for immunoassays, reaching unprecedented levels of precision for manipulating samples and reagents. I will also reflect on the fragmented approaches that our community has in developing microfluidic-based diagnostics, which is exacerbated by the fragmented nature of the in vitro diagnostic market. Standards, design automation, consumer electronic components, and smartphones may play a critical role in helping to rationalize our development and utilization of the next generation of point-of-care diagnostic devices.

09:00

5.1.2

DESIGN AUTOMATION IN MICROFLUIDICS: AN EXPERIMENTALIST'S PERSPECTIVE
Author:
William H. Grover, University of California, Riverside, US
Abstract
The field of microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices is nearly 40 years old. In that time, microfluidic technologies have found several important applications, primarily in bioscience research and healthcare. However, the overall spread of microfluidic technologies has been remarkably slow, especially into important fields like agriculture and environmental monitoring. Why is this? In this talk I will give my answers to this question, based on perspectives gained during 20 years of research in experimental microfluidics. I will share my lab's approaches at automating the design of microfluidic chips, including using randomly-designed chips and databases of chip simulations to automatically find custom designs for given applications. I'll also explain why chip design is only half the problem in microfluidics, and why the other half of the problem—chip fabrication—also deserves our attention. Finally, I will argue that the biggest source of pain for creators of microfluidic chips isn't the chip itself, but the off-chip equipment needed to control the chip, and I will share recent work by my group and others aimed at reducing or eliminating off-chip equipment by integrating its control functions onto the chip itself using "pneumatic logic."

09:30

5.1.3

CHEMOFLUIDICS: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES
Author:
Andreas Richter, Technische Universität Dresden, DE
Abstract
The lab-on-a-chip (LoC) concept was originally intended to introduce the irresistible and steady increasing performance of integrated circuit (IC) technology in microfluidics to automate and to parallelize the processes of complete chemical and biochemical laboratories on a single tiny microchip - a ground-breaking concept especially for life science and analytics. However, LoCs have not yet evolved revolutionary impact in microfluidics as known from microelectronics in information technology. The indisputable reason for that is the lack of scalability of the existing microfluidic platforms, especially the predominating microelectromechanical systems. The perspective solution of the basic challenge of scalability is hoped for the logic microfluidics, which is already named as "second breath of microfluidics" with revolutionary potential. The basic idea of this concept is to drastically reduce the effort for the off-chip control by integration of parts of the chip program by valve-based circuits. Currently there are two major approaches for. The micropneumatic logic microfluidics is technologically based on the multi-layer soft lithography and requires pressure-switchable valves, which derivate from pneumatic membrane valves. The second approach is the concept of chemo-fluidic logic microfluidics, the so-called chemofluidics. It is based on components with decision-making functionality for chemical information, the chemo-fluidic switches, chemostats and transistors and allows to fabricate integrated circuits by patterning of active material layers as known from microelectronics. Because of the chemical feedback the chip control is placed directly on the chip and exclusively controlled by chemical and other events. Since the components of the chip take their energy needed directly from the fluidic chemicals the chemo-fluidic logic chips are fully autonomous micro-systems processing their chip programs automatically and self-powered. A first set of hardware instructions including combinatorial logic gates, RS-flipflops and oscillators principally enabling to realise each more complex function is demonstrated. However, the concept of chemofluidics is still in its infancy. Many challenges on the levels of technology, design and system still await resolution.

10:00

End of session
Coffee Break in Exhibition Area

Coffee Breaks in the Exhibition Area

On all conference days (Tuesday to Thursday), coffee and tea will be served during the coffee breaks at the below-mentioned times in the exhibition area (Terrace Level of the ICCD).

Lunch Breaks (Großer Saal + Saal 1)

On all conference days (Tuesday to Thursday), a seated lunch (lunch buffet) will be offered in the rooms "Großer Saal" and "Saal 1" (Saal Level of the ICCD) to fully registered conference delegates only. There will be badge control at the entrance to the lunch break area.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018