ADVISOR

Dr. Kimberly
Cook-Chennault

TOPIC

Energy Harvesting
Computer Mouse

ADVISOR

Dr. Haim
Baruh

TOPIC

Calculating Aircraft
Altitude with
Meteological Data

ADVISOR

Dr. Assimina
Pelegri

TOPIC

Investigation of
Strain Rate of
Advanced Fibrous
Composites

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Measuring
Thermophysical
Properties of Glassy
Materials via
Focused Laser Spike
Dewetting

ADVISOR

Dr. Rajiv
Malhotra

TOPIC

Hybrid Additive
Manufacturing of
Embedded
Electronics

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Image Processing-
based Control of a
Multi-Rotor
Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle for Mid-
Flight Docking

ADVISOR

Dr. Kimberly
Cook-Chennault

TOPIC

Fundamental
Dynamic
Mechanical Analysis
of Hydrogels

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Novel Algorithms for
Nonlinear Stability
Analysis with
Applications to
Aircraft Dynamics

ADVISOR

Dr. Haym
Benaroya

TOPIC

Lunar Space
Elevator
Development

ADVISOR

Dr. Aaron
Mazzeo

TOPIC

Applications
of Cable
Driven Robots

ADVISOR

Dr. Laurent
Burlion

TOPIC

Adaptive Fault-
Tolerant Control
System Design for
Rotary-Wing UAV

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Velocimetry of the
Flow Associated
with an Oblique-
Shock / Vortex
Interaction

ADVISOR

Dr. Adam
Gormley

TOPIC

Stabilization of HRP
With Single-Enzyme
Nanoparticles

ABSTRACT

In electroporation (EP), electric pulses are applied to cells to cause temporary cell membrane permeabilization. This allows the delivery of molecules, such as drugs or DNA, into cells. The goal with reversible EP is to apply an electric pulse that will ensure both molecular delivery and cell viability. The applied electric field must be optimized because an electric field that is too weak may not permeabilize the cell membrane enough to enable delivery, whereas a field that is too strong will kill the cell. Our lab is developing a microfluidic system that can detect permeabilization of individual cells. It is important to detect membrane permeabilization because this verifies that the applied electric field formed pores in the cell membrane. Detection of cell membrane permeabilization is done by monitoring the impedance of the cell membrane, where changes in impedance due to permeabilization will differ with frequency. After EP, the impedance drops, indicating cell membrane permeabilization. The goal of this study is to identify the frequency at which to monitor the changes in impedance to detect permeabilization with the greatest sensitivity. Materials and Methods: NIH 3T3 cells are suspended in buffer solution and placed into a syringe that is loaded into a syringe pump (Harvard Apparatus, Massachusetts) that is connected to the microdevice. The microdevice contains the planar electrodes that are used to deliver the permeabilizing field and to detect cell permeabilization. Using the syringe pump to control the flow rate, cells flow through the microdevice until a cell is trapped between the electrodes. A lock-in amplifier (Zurich Instruments, Switzerland) is used to measure the impedance of the cell membrane at frequencies ranging from 0-10 kHz. The cell is then electropermeabilized with a field strength of 0.6 kV/cm or 1.2 kV/cm applied for 1 ms, and the impedance is measured again. The pre-EP and post-EP impedance measurements are then compared to identify the frequency range with the most sensitivity. Results: Preliminary data suggests that the optimal frequency for detection is between 250-1,500 Hz.

ADVISOR

Dr. Joseph
W. Freeman

TOPIC

Vascularization
of Bone Scaffolds

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Designing a
Controlled Drug
Delivery for
Treatment of
Osteoarthritis

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Analysis of the
Impact that Different
Footwear has on the
Internal Forces of
the Leg During Gait

ADVISOR

Dr. Jorge
Ortiz

TOPIC

SmartBox: A Platform
for In-Situ Sensing
and Active Learning

ADVISOR

TOPIC

Learning
Predictors from
Multidimensional
Data with Tensor
Factorizations

ADVISOR

Dr. Emina
Soljanin

TOPIC

Monogamy of
Entanglement in
Quantum Systems
and it's Implications