Dr. Yanwei Jia

Assistant Professor

University of Macau

Lecture for Students and Teachers

Title: Digital Microfluidics for Disease Diagnostics

Time: Dec. 23, 2019, 9:30

Place: The No.3 lecture hall on the third floor of the conference center.

Introduction to Dr. Yanwei Jia:

Yanwei Jia received her PhD, MSc and BSc degrees in Physics from the National University of Singapore (2006) and Hunan University in China (2002 and 1996) respectively. After PhD graduation, Jia had worked as a Research Fellow in the National University of Singapore in 2006 before she moved to Brandeis University in the USA, working as a Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Associate and Research Scientist chronically (2006-2012). She is currently an assistant professor in the State Key Laboratory of Analog and Mixed-Signal VLSI (AMSV), leading a group working on multidisciplinary research based on microfluidics for biological/chemical applications, especially in the field of biomedical science. She won the Innovation Prize in 2008 given by the International Organization for Biological Crystallization. She also won the Innovation Award in 2019 on the 9^th International Multidisciplinary Conference on Optofluidics.

Abstract:

With the capability of electronically manipulating individual droplets, digital microfluidics (DMF) has attracted much attention for it removes the burden of pumps and valves for channel microfluidic systems, making it an ideal platform for point-of-care biomedical applications. In this talk, Jia will introduce the updated research progress in her lab on developing portable intelligent digital microfluidic systems for disease diagnostics. An electronic control system with real-time feedback and image processing has been developed for the automated control system. Novel chip design and fabrication combining with specific molecular chemicals have speed up the DNA amplification from hours to minutes and specific pathogen detection from minutes to seconds. Single cell drug screening has been realized on DMF chip with 3D microstructures for precision medicine. A novel pico-pipette on DMF was developed for precise and flexible sample delivery, which significantly simplified the protocol of sample preparation on-chip. All the attempt would pave the way to an automatic DMF device for point-of-care disease diagnostics.

(School of Food and Biological Engineering)