July 2008 -

Bioengineering Graduate Student Tanner Nevill is using microfluidic chips normally used for things like laser printing and biomedical research to create tiny works of art.

His technique allows for filling extremely long microfluidic channels with solutions to create a “painting” of an image.

It all started when he asked the undergraduate student he was working with, Austin Day, to design a microfludic chip that looked cool. Austin came back a few days later with an autocad drawing of the UC Berkeley Campanile that was amazing.

The image created by Austin inspired Tanner to expand on the idea of 'microfluidic art.' Since Austin moved into another lab, his new undergrad, Albert Mach, has been helping him develop a way to preserve the 'art' for extended time periods. Tanner and Albert are members of Bioengineering Professor Luke Lee’s laboratory. Check out the BioPOETS website to see their work.