양지원 교수님 연구실에서는 2월 17일(금)에 Texas A&M University의 한아름 교수님을 모시고 아래와 같이 초청세미나를 개최합니다.

관심 있는 학생들의 많은 참여 바랍니다.

= Special Invited Seminar =

- Speaker: Prof. Arum Han, Texas A&M University (Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering & Dept. Biomedical Engineering)

- Date/Time: Feb 17, 2012 (Fri) 15:30-16:30

- Place: #1101 @ W1-3 Bldg.

- Title: Microfluidic Platforms for High-Throughput Analysis of Microbial Bioenergy Systems

- Contact: Moon, Myounghoon (X5964)

Microfluidic Platforms for High-Throughput Analysis of Microbial Bioenergy Systems

Prof. Arum Han, Texas A&M University

Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering & Dept. Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

Photosynthetic microorganisms such as microalgae have great potential to supply the nation with abundant bioenergy as they are capable of high oil production while utilizing minimal amounts of land and water.  However in order for these organisms to become a viable renewable energy solution, significant improvements in oil production, biomass growth, and temperature tolerance have to be made through fundamental understanding of basic algal metabolic processes. Here we show our development of high throughput photosynthetic organism screening/analyses platform that is currently being used to identify and define metabolic processes and genetic constraints that significantly enhance oil production and growth of microalgae in a massively parallel fashion.  Arrays of microfluidically controlled on-chip dynamic light controllers combined with a cell culture array enable screening different light exposure conditions, including light intensity as well as day/night cycles, simultaneously in one experimental trial with single-colony resolution growth and oil analyses. Green colony forming micoralga Botryococcus braunii is currently being investigated using this platform due to its ability to accumulate high levels of liquid hyrocarbon oils.  In the second example of high-throughput microfluidic platforms for microbial bioenergy system analysis, I would like to introduce our microbial fuel cell array (MFCA) that we have developed and used for finding and analyzing electricity generating environmental microbes.  Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are remarkable ‘‘green energy’’ devices that exploit microbes to generate electricity from organic compounds. However current MFC systems do not generate sufficient power to support widespread and cost-effective applications. Our microfabricated MFC array, a compact and user friendly platform, functions as 24 independent miniaturized MFCs and supports direct and parallel comparisons of microbial electrochemical activities. I will be showing our MFC array characterization result and its application toward environmental electricigens screening. We believe that microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip platforms can dramatically accelerate research and development in the broad area of microbial bioenergy generation systems.

Biography

Dr. Arum Han is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and also in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University (USA). He joined Texas A&M University in 2005 as an Assistant Professor.  He is also a faculty of Texas A&M Health Science Center and the Texas A&M Institute for Neuroscience. He received his Ph. D in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005, his M.S. from the University of Cincinnati in 2000, and his B.S. from the Seoul National University in 1997, all in electrical engineering.  His research interests include the development of miniaturized systems for cellular and molecular analysis using micro and nano technologies (BioMEMS & Lab-on-a-Chip) and development of microsystems for bioenergy applications. He serves as the editorial board member of the journal PLoS ONE, served as the general chair of the 3^rd Circuits and Systems for Medical and Environmental Applications, and regularly serves as grant panelist for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). His research is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy, and several private companies.