Achievement

IGERT-Lifechips fellow, Meghan Cozzens, has been assisting with an "anthrax detection system" in Dr. Marc Madou's BioMEMS lab at UC Irvine, who is an active Lifechips faculty member. By working with chemical, mechanical, and biomedical engineers, they have discovered many of the principles controlling bacillus Anthracis sedimentation behavior in a centrifugal disk (C.D.) detection platform. The discovery process has been in the form of mathematical modeling and hands-on experience. Meghan and her research partners are in the process of conducting further experiments to validate the behavior expected from their models. This work aligns well with the goals of Lifechips as it is very interdisciplinary and intersects the macro-and-micro-engineering fields. To Meghan, this project was made possible due to the Lifechips program because it has allowed her the freedom to work freely in the Madou lab without the concern for funding and hopefully, this will be the permanent lab for her.