Cell & Tissue Technology Weekend Getaway - Diego Burbano

After receiving the chips back from wire bonding, there are a few more steps before we can test them. First comes epoxy painting, then the second etching, and lastly sterilization. Now the chips are ready for cell culturing: ventricular rat cells will be seeded on the fibronectin coated chip and allowed to grow for three days. During this time, the gripers close around the cells, ideally enclosing only one cell each. On day three, we record extracellular action potentials with the electrodes embedded in the grippers, and we stain the cells with Fluo-4 in order to image the calcium fluxes around the cells. After obtaining all this data, we look for closed grippers with a cell inside, and try to match the electric signals with the images. Right now, I’m pushing to use another imaging technique, confocal microscopy, since it provides better temporal resolution needed to correlate it with the extracellular recordings. In the meantime, outside of the lab, I’m writing the necessary Matlab scripts to analyze the data. Specifically, we need to filter the signal, detect action potentials, sort the voltage peaks, and calculate the difference in firing time between electrodes of the same gripper.

These past two weekends I have travelled outside of Belgium. Kevin and I visited Copenhagen for a few days, and the crossed Øresund Bridge to Malmö, Sweden. Copenhagen was expensive, but we bought a Copenhagen Pass which allowed us to go to several museums, tours, and use public transportation for the whole duration of our stay. Tivoli Gardens, the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world, the Louisiana Museum, and the street food by the waterfront are some of the experiences I will never forget. Malmö was rainy and quiet, which made for a good, relaxing last day before coming back to work.

Last weekend was CTT Weekend (the group I work in, “Cell & Tissue Technology), a once-a-year retreat with most of the group. We rented a house on the coastline of Zeeland, in the Netherlands. Even though one of the days it was rainy, we still had lots of fun playing games inside, going to the beach at midnight, barbecuing under the porch, and relaxing in the sauna.    

Sweeps and Sweet Swigs - Kevin Li

Things have finally kicked into full gear for all of us the past few weeks – we presented to Tom and Dr. Searson for our midway updates and have all made good progress on our projects. On my own project, I’ve wrote numerous scripts to sweep over various parameters, including the radius of the scatterer, width of the waveguide, depth of the reflecting mirror, as well as the phase-change material to be implemented in the device. With increasing dimensions for the arrays, the simulations have begun a considerable amount of time, even when I tap into the computing power from the clusters here at IMEC. Once I obtain the results, I analyze the data and make adjustments to the design, finding the “sweet spot” for each parameter to optimize and obtain the desired scattering behavior. So far, I’ve characterized a single scatterer as well as a 1x3, 1x5, and 1x10 array as well, moving forward to a 3x3 matrix and then, if time allows, a larger-scale matrix of scatterers.

In addition to the sweeps, there’s been a few swigs as well – one of the grad students graciously took us to Sint-Sixtusabdij Westvleteren, a monastery in Westvleteren. Located virtually in the middle of nowhere, the monastery can’t be reached by public transport and took us a 2-hour drive across Belgium. After an amazing culinary experience, we went north and dove into a surprisingly not-fatally-cold Atlantic Ocean at a beach near Bruges. The next day, we walked around Bruges, the capital city of West Flanders with a quaint, enchanting small-town feel.

The next weekend Diego and I ventured north to Copenhagen, Denmark, drifting from museum to museum. Tivoli Gardens was a very interesting experience – a mix of an amusement park, carnival, upscale eateries, and a quirky park with free-roaming peacocks. Also included in our adventures were boat rides through a multi-colored canal called Nyhavn, walking up an open stairway wrapping around a church’s spire 90 meters up in the air, and eating open-faced smørrebrød sandwiches. The last day was spent across the bridge in Malmö, a quiet way to end a lively weekend.

The next weekend I took the Eurostar to London, a city I’ve always wanted to visit since reading all the Harry Potter books approximately 10 times each. Walking into a sea of English accents out of the station, I felt like I was inside a Harry Potter movie…

Turning torsos at the Turning Torso (Malmö, Sweden)

When you try to be artsy (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Jellied eel…breakfast of champions (London, United Kingdom)