Event
Ph.D. Proposal Exam: Sheung Lu
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
2:00 a.m.
AVW 2224
Maria Hoo
301 405 3681
mch@umd.edu
ANNOUNCEMENT: Ph.D. Research Proposal Exam
Name: Sheung Lu
Committee:
Professor Dr. Pamela Abshire (Chair)
Professor Dr. Timothy Horiuchi
Professor Dr. Sahil Shah
Date/time: July 19th, 2022, 2pm-4pm
Location: AVW 2224
Title: High-Density Lab-On-CMOS with Microfluidic Integration for Biological Cell Monitoring
Abstract:
This research proposal focuses on the development of high-density cell monitoring integrated sensors with microfluidic integration for supporting Lab-On-CMOS applications. Capacitance sensing is an emerging technology for monitoring cell growth, proliferation, and migration. This work expands on previous capacitive sensor circuits that consisted of interdigitated electrodes that monitor the capacitive loading of cells on the chip surface which is captured through capacitance to frequency circuitry. This method of sensing provides high temporal resolution data of the changes in the cell culture environment. In many identifiable behaviors like cell growth and cell mitosis, cells traverse and expand into neighboring areas on the die surface. Therefore, a capacitance sensor array with high spatial density allows for higher confidence and redundancy in the capture and classification of these cell behaviors. With a larger array, important considerations have to be made with the readout architecture as more sensors would lead to longer sampling times presenting a tradeoff with temporal resolution. This will be addressed with additional features to the readout architecture that will adjust the sampling area and sampling time: parallel readout of the sensors, random access selection of sensors, and programmable integration time.
A secondary focus of this work is to integrate microfluidic channels fabricated on top of the sensing array. This has the potential for better control of the cell culture environment which can be changed in multiple ways. The cell culture media can be managed to: allow for the continuous replenishment of nutrients with fresh solution, create linear or logarithmic gradients of dilutions of pharmaceutical agents, and administer drugs in a time-dependent manner with fast transient pulsed or gradually ramped exposures. The goal of this work is to create a dynamic integrated Lab-On-CMOS platform for controlled experimentation of live cells. The system is intended to provide an automatic, real-time, and label-free cell tracking to monitor and explore cytotoxic effects to cells in a high-throughput manner.
