Accelerating the Mass Transport of DNA Biomolecules onto Morpholino Microarray by Using Micro/Nanofluidic Concentration Chip
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Department Seminar Series
Rafael (Yong-Ak) Song
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, NYUAD
Micro- and Nanotechnology open up new exciting possibilities to manipulate biological entities and detect biological signals at such unprecedented precision that we can gain deeper insights into the complex biological processes and find new approaches to solve biological and biomedical problems.
In this talk, I will present a new microchip technology for enhancing the reaction speed and sensitivity of biosensors such as DNA microarrays. Starting from only a small amount of samples in the range of few microliters for assays, we can reduce the detection time drastically by increasing the concentration of an analyte locally and reducing its diffusion length through electrokinetic concentration. Due to its simplicity, the proposed micro/nanofluidic chip platform can easily be extended to other types of biosensors such as Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM) sensors, mass spectrometry and other highly multiplexed biosensors. Once fully developed, the concentrator chip will become an indispensable high-throughput tool for ultrasensitive biosensing needs.
Biosketch
Rafael Y. Song’s research and teaching interests are interdisciplinary in both engineering disciplines such as design and manufacturing of MEMS devices, fluid mechanics, and micro/nanofabrication, as well as in biological engineering areas such as BioMEMS devices for separation and detection of biomolecules, neuroprosthetic implants, and optogenetics.
He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from RWTH Aachen University, Germany and worked at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) as a Senior Research Scientist. He joined the Fraunhofer USA in Boston as a Senior Engineer and worked in the Micro/Nanofluidic BioMEMS Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT as a Research Scientist. He held an appointment as a Research Fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston until he joined NYUAD in September 2012. He currently holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering.