Project Title: Magnetic field induced concentration gradients of nanoparticles in a microfluidic system and its implication for circulating tumor cell enrichment

Project Duration: May 21 – July 28 2018 (10 weeks), 40 hours per week.

Project Mentors:

• Primary Faculty Mentor (Name, Affiliation, website and Email/Phone):

Leidong Mao, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, http://magnet.engr.uga.edu, 706-542-1871, mao@uga.edu

• Secondary Faculty Mentor (Name, Affiliation, website and Email/Phone):

Xianqiao Wang, School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural and Mechanical Engineering, http://xqwang.engr.uga.edu, 706-542-6251, xqwang@uga.edu

• Graduate Student mentor (Name, Affiliation and Email/Phone):

Yang Liu, yang.liu31@uga.edu

Ning Liu, nl47672@uga.edu

Project Description: Predicting and measuring timely and spatially varying colloidal magnetic nanoparticle concentration in a three-dimensional microsystem are of great engineering interest for applications including magnetic cell and exosome manipulation/isolation and magnetic nanoparticle therapeutics. This project aims to: (1) create analytical and computational models that can predict the dynamic transport of magnetic nanoparticles in a microfluidic system that consists of a microchannel and permanent magnets; (2) develop experimental techniques that can measure the nanoparticle concentration profile.

REU Student Role and Responsibility: The REU student will work with two faculty and a graduate student to: (1) further develop an existing analytical model and create a newly-developed computational model of magnetic nanoparticle transport in order to model the timely and spatially varying concentration of nanoparticles; (2) develop experimental techniques (with the mentors) that can measure predicted concentrations in a microfluidic system; (3) analyze experimental data and the potential discrepancy between models and experiments; (4) present results on a weekly basis to the research group; (5) submit an abstract to BMES annual meeting (Atlanta GA); (6) contribute to potential journal publications.

Required skills or courses for the REU student: Ideally, the student should have a strong physics/engineering background and have taken courses including electromagnetism, ordinary differential equation, finite element methods. The student should have experiences in working with MATLAB for modeling and simulation.

Expected Outcome for REU student: The student will submit an abstract to BMES annual meeting, and co-author journal publications if the project is successful.