Start
Jan 19, 2012 - 17:00
End
Jan 19, 2012 - 18:00
Venue
Room 118 (Creativity Hall Ground Floor) Chemical Engineering
Event Type
Speaker
Venkata Ramana Gundabala is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology USA.
Title
Microfluidics Routes to Droplet Generation and Cell Microencapsulation
Abstract: Emulsions which are drops of one liquid dispersed in another immiscible liquid have a very broad range of applications including cosmetics the food industry and drug delivery. Microfluidics offers a promising route to fabricate these systems. In this talk I will discuss a novel microfluidic technique that we developed based on electrospray in coflow geometries to generate drops with an average size that can be tuned in an unprecedented range from well above to well below the smallest geometric feature of the device. The method relies on coupling electric and hydrodynamic forces. Using optical microscopy and high-speed imaging techniques we demonstrated that the device can be operated in various regimes: dripping electro-dripping and an electrically controlled regime. These various regimes allow generation of drops in various sizes compared to the tip diameter. Using the device we also made fundamental studies on the electric current behavior of electrospray processes and on droplet generation mechanism in microfluidics. Among the prominent applications of emulsions is also their use as templates for synthesis of particles that act as drug delivery vehicles. The graft rejection problem usually encountered in drug delivery applications is typically overcome through cell microencapsulation. Alginate with its excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability properties is one of the most commonly used biomaterials in drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. In this talk I will focus on a robust microfluidic platform we developed for generation of alginate micro particles and the subsequent encapsulation of yeast cells. The technique allows for generation of surface encapsulated alginate particles with precise control over both the particle size and yeast cell content. The liquid core opens the possibility for encapsulation of multiple types of cells into the alginate particles and for controlled drug delivery.Biography: Venkata Ramana Gundabala is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology USA. He obtained his PhD from University of Sheffield UK and his master’s degree from Drexel University USA. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge and Georgia Institute of Technology. His main areas of research are in Coatings Technology and Applied Microfluidics. In the area of water-based latex coatings he has worked on a range of topics from modeling surfactant transport in dried films to studying film formation of nanocomposite coatings. In the area of Microfluidics he designed novel techniques for droplet generation and cell microencapsulation for biomedical and other applications. Currently he is using microfluidic devices for conducting behavioral assays on Caenorhabditis elegans a model organism for studies in developmental biology. His future research interests lie in Microfluidic tools for generation of nanomaterials Polymer nanocomposites for functional coatings and High-throughput tools in developmental biology.