Aditi and SmartSoil Team Win Spring 2019 Capstone Design Expo 300

Aditi and SmartSoil Team Win Spring 2019 Capstone Design Expo

Aditi and SmartSoil Team Win Spring 2019 Capstone Design Expo

Out of 236 teams from 11 different schools, this year’s best overall project award was awarded to Adid Kumar and the SmartSoil team! The team developed an indoor and user-friendly composting device that uses worms to naturally create nuitrient rich compost (called vermicomposting). The team used old food waste to feed the worms and create usable compost in just two weeks; producing 50x high-quality fertilizer per year when compared with its closest competitor. Learn more about the 2019 Spring Capstone projects at https://www.me.gatech.edu/2019_Spring_Capstone.

Ussing Chamber Assembly (Section View) render v010

Epithelial Electrophysiology

Recent advancements utilizing induced pluripotent stem cell-derived (iPSC) epithelia have made disease modeling and cell therapy for many, previously untreatable diseases possible. However, current electrophysiology techniques – used to validate epithelial function – are painstaking and require a highly trained user; limiting experimental throughput. We are developing new techniques and devices that enable both high-throughput and high-quality electrophysiological measurements. Our lab has built a robot that automates intracellular electrophysiology of epithelia that automates the pipette insertion process and, simultaneously improves throughput. We are also exploring new electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS)-based techniques to extract high resolution, membrane-specific properties non invasively. These techniques could be used as the basis for at-line functional characterization of epithelia in all future iPSC-based therapies.