Surface Patterned Omniphobic Tiles (SPOTs) for scalable biomedical experimentation
Over the past five years, the Cira Lab has developed a research program at the intersection of microfluidics, fluid physics, and systems biology, with a focus on enabling new modes of biomedical experimentation. A major outcome of this effort is the development of the Surface Patterned Omniphobic Tiles (SPOTs) platform for liquid handling. This platform leverages patterned wettability and passive capillarity to enable the rapid, precise, and high-throughput generation of microscale experiments. In this talk, I will highlight a constellation of projects related to the development, refinement, and application of this platform to address biomedical research questions. Together, this work illustrates a broader vision: using fundamental insights from fluid physics to build accessible microdevices that expand the scale, precision, and scope of experimentation.
Bio: Nate Cira completed undergraduate majors in biomedical engineering, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011. He received his master’s in 2013 and his Ph.D. in 2017 from Stanford University where he was a member of the Quake lab. He has worked on projects involving microbiology, microfluidic devices, community ecology, capillarity and wetting, and network theory. He was an Evans Scholar, NSF GRFP Recipient, and a Siebel Scholar. He started the Cira lab as a Rowland Fellow at the Rowland Institute in late 2017 and as an assistant professor in Cornell University’s Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering in 2021. âÃÂÃÂ