I started research during my junior year of college with Dr. Eric Brouzes’ lab of Droplet Microfluidics. My current project specifically deals with the surface treatment of the microfluidic devices. The goal of the surface treatment is to make the channels super hydrophobic and fluorophilic at the same time, and the enhancement of this technique will allow for furthering the single cell encapsulation project.

The optimization of the single cell encapsulation procedure can help better understand the physiological and biochemical properties of cell sub populations that normally result from genetic and epigenetic modifications and stochastic gene expression. With the development of the technique of performing assays on the single cell or single molecule level we can understand the effects of stochastic gene expression which can induce changes between phenotype without the occurrence of genetic mutations the combination of droplet microfluidic and other molecular biology technique such as gene sequencing will allow us to conduct genome profiling at the single cell resolution which can directly allow researchers to understand and monitor the development and progression of cancer.ac_2 (1) jpeg

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The above images show a drop of water on the surface of a microfluidic chip before and after the surface treatment was conducted. The channels were treated to make them super hydrophobic with a change in water contact angle from 8 degrees to 117 degees.