President's Showcase
JP Romero Villalaz
Supervising Professor: Z. Leo Liu
JP is a senior majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in Japanese language, from the Republic of Panama. He has been working in microfluidics and thrombosis research for a year under Dr. Leo Liu's tutelage and has experience in working with molecular biology and parasitology.
Abstract
Cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, are the major causes of death in the US, accounting for 1/3 of deaths annually and causing an excessive economic burden of 10 billion USD per day. Acute arterial thrombosis is a process that causes rapid occlusion of stenotic arteries (e.g., the coronary artery and the carotid artery) and subsequently heart attacks and strokes. Recently, researchers including the Liu Group have developed bio-functional microfluidic devices as diagnostic tools for arterial thrombosis. These devices allow fast diagnosis and screening of patients with high-risk arterial thrombosis, which has the potential to be used as point-of-care devices to guide clinical decisions.
Existing manufacturing techniques for these devices based on photolithography are expensive and time-consuming, which leads to issues scaling up for mass production. Furthermore, photolithography techniques are limited to two-dimensional geometries and are difficult to apply to complex vascular geometries that are often patient-specific. The solution researchers propose is to implement the use of 3-D printing. 3-D printing can quickly prototype complex 3-D geometries with relatively low cost. One issue with this technique is that it enhances surface roughness due to relatively moderate resolution. To solve this issue, surface coating techniques have been strongly considered to improve surface quality in various applications.
Presentation Materials