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May 22, 2013 - Prof. Tsung-Yi Ho from National Cheng Kung University visited CECA and gave a talk on "Digital Microfluidic Hardware/Software Co-Design and Cyberphysical System Integration".

Abstract: Advances in droplet-based digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) have led to the emergence of biochips for automating laboratory procedures in biochemistry and molecular biology. To meet the challenges of increasing design complexity and precision, the interplay between hardware and software through sensor-based cyberphysical integration will be involved to build DMFBs effectively. This talk offers attendees an opportunity to bridge the semiconductor ICs/system industry with the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. The talk will first describe emerging applications in biology and biochemistry that can benefit from advances in electronic “biochips”. The presenter will next describe technology platforms for accomplishing “biochemistry on a chip”, and introduce the audience to microarrays and fluidic actuation methods based on microfluidics. Next, the presenter will describe fabrication techniques for digital microfluidic biochips, followed by computer-aided design, design-for-testability, cyberphysical integration, and reconfiguration aspects of chip/system design. In this way, the audience will see how a “biochip compiler” can translate protocol descriptions provided by an end user to a set of optimized and executable fluidic instructions that will run on the underlying digital microfluidic platform.