Events Calendar

EE-EP Seminar - Lin Han

Speaker: Lin Han, Biomedical Engineering, Yale University

Talk Title: Microtechnology Platforms to Interrogate Information Flow in Human Society and Single Cell Communication

Abstract: Human beings are living in a society full of information flow. The delivery of information and realization of communication are mostly based on electronic products which are assembled with displays. One important part of my research is electronic materials and devices for flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) displays. A novel SiO2-silicone insulator material was invented, which was deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) from environmentally friendly hexamethyl disiloxane (HMDSO) and O2 at room temperature. This hybrid is homogeneous and combines the electrical properties of thermal silicon oxide and the mechanical flexibility of polymer. This new hybrid is not only an effective encapsulation barrier to protect OLEDs, but also an excellent gate dielectric for amorphous silicon thin film transistors. As the gate dielectric, it enables transistors with greatly improved performance including output current, electrical stability, and flexibility. This SiO2-silicone hybrid is a promising material to solve the bottleneck of flexible OLEDs displays.

On the other hand the information flow in single cells is determined by the Central Dogma, also called a DNA-RNA-PROTEIN axis, which describes how genetic information is transcribed to messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and expressed to produce proteins that form the building blocks of a living cell and fulfill all biological functions. Despite recent advances in genomic technologies and next generation sequencing, it is still challenging to investigate the genetic information flow through multiple levels of the Central Dogma (e.g., from DNA to RNA) at a single-cell level. Microfluidics-enabled approaches allow for rapid separation of cytoplasmic and nuclear contents of a single cell followed by on-chip amplification of genomic DNA and messenger RNA. This platform is potentially an enabling tool to permit multiple genomic measurements performed on the same single cells and opens new opportunities to tackle a range of fundamental biological questions. It also helps addressing clinical challenges such as diagnosing intra-tumor heterogeneity and dissecting complex cellular immune responses via underlying cell-to-cell communication at single-cell levels.


Biography: Lin Han received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. She is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in Biomedical Engineering at Yale University. Her research mainly focuses on 1) Microfluidic platforms for single-cell genomics, epigenetics, transcriptomics and proteomics; 2) materials and devices for flexible electronics. Microfluidic platform enables us to break the bottleneck of traditional biology technique, and extract the multi-level information (genomic DNA, mRNA, protein secretion, and phenotype) simultaneously from single cells. As a result, we could be able to effectively investigate the dynamic evolutionary dynamics of cancer initiation, progression, evolution of resistance and response to therapy. By applying flexible electronics into biology and biomedical field, we can not only conduct scientific study, but also build functional systems to contribute to human beings health care.

Host: EE-Electrophysics

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Marilyn Poplawski