Title: Microfluidic Devices for Virus Detection and Cancer Treatment Monitoring
Speaker: Prof. Z. Hugh Fan
Moderator: Prof. João Pedro Conde, INESC MN
When: April 23, 2024 @ 11h00 Lisbon time
Where: INESC Lx Auditorium (room #9)

ABSTRACT: Microfluidics is a field that promises to reach the holy grail of “lab-on-a-chip”. In analogy to shrinking a computer from the size of a room in the 1950s to a laptop today, instruments for chemical and biological analyses may be miniaturized into microfluidic devices using modern microfabrication technology. Potential applications of the portable, miniaturized devices include point-of-care testing, environmental monitoring, and detection of pathogens in the field. In this presentation, a brief historic prospective on microfluidics will be given first. The focus will be on the development of microfluidic devices for two real-world applications: (1) detection of mosquito-borne virus (e.g., Zika virus) and airborne virus (e.g., SARS-CoV-2) at the point of care; and (2) monitoring cancer treatment response or resistance using liquid biopsy.

BIO: Dr. Hugh Fan is a Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida (UF), Gainesville, FL, USA. He was the Director of Interdisciplinary Microsystems Group (IMG), which is a multidepartmental, education and research program led by 11 faculty members. Prior to joining UF in 2003, Dr. Fan was a Principal Scientist at ACLARA BioSciences Inc. from 2000 to 2003 and a Member of the Technical Staff at Sarnoff Corp from 1995 to 2000.
His research interests include microfluidics, BioMEMS, sensors, cancer prognosis, and pathogen detection. Dr. Fan has Authorsed >120 journal articles with more than 15,000 citations. In addition, he edited 1 book, received 10 patents, and Authorsed >80 book chapters and referred proceeding articles. Dr. Fan has been recognized by Fraunhofer-Bessel Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), E.T.S. Walton Award from Science Foundation Ireland, and Career Award from National Institutes of Health (USA). He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Dr. Fan serves as an associate editor of Microsystems & Nanoengineering (Nature Publishing Group), and an editorial board member of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), Biosensors (MDPI), and Biomedical Materials (IOP).