Scientific Context of the Project

Novel microfluidic technologies are becoming more and more useful in single-cell manipulation, sorting and analysis. There are specific microfluidic systems to track and trap single cells inside specific chambers, monitor their growth and even division and extract them for downstream advanced molecular biological analysis. Our aim will be to develop a novel “high-throughput real-time cytometer (variant)” comprising a microfluidic device with complementary biosensor-based detection and sorting system.

Innovative Aspects of the Project

Our main novelty will be democratization of this instrumentation (affordability, scalability, open access platform in all aspects): off-the-shelf components, developing an open hardware developmental platform for R&D in this field including its software.

Research Environment and Infrastructure

Boğaziçi University one of the top public universities in Turkey. It has excellent research facilities to conduct cutting-edge projects in Life Sciences. The researcher will have access to all the relevant labs at the Center for Life Sciences and Technologies (https://lifesci.boun.edu.tr/en) and at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (https://bme.boun.edu.tr/).

The current laboratory of Prof. Ozturk is XLAB (https://xlab.boun.edu.tr/), which was established in 2010 as a spinout Lab from BUMIL - Boğaziçi University Medical Imaging Laboratories. The main research focus is democratization of biomedical instrumentation; it has been working mainly on novel but affordable/accessible medical imaging instrumentation systems. This project will be its first venture into the medical biotechnology instrumentation technologies.  XLAB is located in Feza Gürsey Building of Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Campus and has a nationally (NDK) accredited X-ray research room and a full biomedical electronics infrastructure.