Design, fabrication and testing of microfluidic platforms for drug discovery and healthcare applications.
Dr. Elvira's research group develops microfluidic (lab-on-a-chip) platforms for drug discovery and healthcare applications. The Elvira laboratory has been designed to fabricate and use microfluidic devices with feature sizes on the order of tens of micrometres. The laboratory has state-of-the art Class 100 laminar flow hoods for work under particulate-free conditions, several different types of pumping mechanisms for liquid insertion into the microfluidic devices, powerful Nikon microscopes for analysis and testing, and high-speed cameras for visualization of on-chip experiments.
Design, testing, prototyping, analysis, computational modelling, surface modification
- Agriculture, animal science and food
- Chemical industries
- Life sciences, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment
- Manufacturing and processing
Specialized labs and equipment
| Equipment | Function |
|---|---|
| Laminar flow workstations |
Laminar flow workstations with filtered air gas gun:
|
| Plasma oven | Diener Electronic Zepto One plasma system |
| Nikon Ti2-U microscope | Nikon Ti2-U inverted microscope with phase contrast and 2x, 10x, 20x and 40x long working distance objective lenses |
| Nikon stereomicroscope | Nikon SMZ1270 stereomicroscope with 22 mm field of view and an LED ring illuminator |
| Lipid preparation facility |
|
| Syringe pumps | World Precision Instruments Aladdin programmable syringe pumps (4) |
| Precision syringe pumps | Cetoni neMESYS Low Pressure 290N syringe pumps with QmixELEMENTS control software (5) |
| Pressure pumps | Elvesys OB1 pressure controllers with three 0-2000 mbar channels, one 0-8000 mbar channel and digital flow sensors |
| Camera | Teledyne DALSA Genie Nano C1280 |
| High-speed camera | Phantom VEO 710L high speed camera |
| High-speed camera | Mikrotron MotionBLITZ EoSens Cube7 high-speed camera |
| High-speed camera for fluorescence imaging | ORCA-Flash4.0 V3 sCMOS camera with 82% high quantum efficiency |
| Nikon Ti2-E microscope | Nikon Ti2-E inverted motorized microscope with perfect focus system, and 2x, 10x, 20x and 40x long working distance objective lenses, motorized epifluorescence turret and a motorized stage |
| Fluorescence light sources | Solis cold white and 365 nm LED light sources with a variety of filter cubes |
| Oven | Fisher Scientific Isotemp gravity convection oven |
| Spin coater | Laurell Technologies WS-650Mz-23NPPB spin coater |
Additional information
| Title | URL |
|---|---|
| Microfluidics in Health Care and Drug Discovery: Large-scale potential from small-scale chips | https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/biomedical/members/profiles/elvira-katherine.php |
| Dr. Elvira’s Canada Research Chair profile | http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=3903 |
| Video about Dr. Elvira’s research | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTBsPIXS6aU |