Blanca Lapizco-Encinas - Featured Faculty 2013

Microfluidics is a novel and rapidly growing field with applications ranging from biomedical and clinical analysis to environmental monitoring. Microfluidics has revolutionized the manner in which many analyses are carried out, opening the possibility for portable laboratories for on-field applications and online-process monitoring; i.e., taking the laboratory where it is needed, to the field or to the production line. Lapizco-Encinas' research seeks to develop new microfluidic techniques for the separation and detection of biological particles such as proteins, DNA and cells. Her research is focused on the field of electrokinetics, where electric fields are used to manipulate particles in microfluidic channels. The use of electric field allows probing the electrical properties of biological particles, in particular it allows for the characterization of cells; such as the separation of dead from living cells.

Lapizco-Encinas' was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to further her work on the manipulation of biological cells employing non-uniform electric fields. When particles are exposed to non-uniform electric fields, the particles polarize, but due to the non-uniformity of the field, the Coulombic forces in the particles are imbalanced, producing a net particle movement. This effect is called Dielectrophoresis, a technique that allows for effective particle separation and enrichment with many potential applications in bio-analysis. The main advantages of miniaturized electrokinetic techniques, such as dielectrophoresis, is that analysis of biological particles can be performed in portable microdevices, at lower cost with processing times in the range of minutes; while traditional methods that may rely on cell culture, can take up to several days to produce a result.

Lapizco-Encinas and her collaborators are currently developing a novel electrokinetic scheme to achieve simultaneous separation and concentration of biological cells in microchannels by employing low frequency alternating current electric fields.

To learn more about Lapizco-Encinas' work, you can visit: http://microbioseplab.org