Printable Meeting FlierDecember Meeting Notice
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Vreeland: Microfluidics for the Synthesis, Separation, and Analysis of Soft Engineered NanoParticles
Wyatt Vreeland
Research Chemical Engineer
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Gaithersburg, MD
Abstract:
Microfluidics has long been touted as a critical enabling technology for the next generation of chemical and biological analyses. In fact, microfluidics is a very active area of research with journals focusing on lab-on-a-chip technologies and their applications often garnering the highest impact factors in the analytical chemistry community’s archival literature. Despite the huge academic success of this field, the number of commercial products continues to lag the promises this field’s publication record portends.
NIST has leveraged the unique physics accessible to these micrometer scale devices to enable novel methods of chemical and biological analysis and synthesis. We use asymmetric flow field flow fractionation (AF4) a type of “chromatography” that does not have a stationary or pseudo-stationary phase enabling the separation of “fragile” of soft materials as our primary analytical technique for the analysis of liposomes. Liposomes are spherical structures that are made from a bilayer of amphipathic phosphoplipid molecules and used for molecular encapsulation and delivery vehicles. These particles can range in size from tens of nanometers to tens of microns in diameter. We have developed microfluidic systems for the rapid formation of designer liposomes for medical imaging applications that obviate many of the challenges to their widespread use.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Wyatt Vreeland is a Research Chemical Engineer in the Macromolecular Structure and Function group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Wyatt graduated magna cum laude from the University of Tulsa in 1997 and immediately began his doctoral studies at Northwestern, where under the direction of Annelise Barron he developed new methodologies for high-resolution electrophoretic analysis of DNA in microfluidic devices. He received his PhD in 2002 and joined NIST that same year as an NRC postdoctoral fellow working with Laurie Locascio on applications of liposomes microfluidics. Dr. Vreeland currently directs a laboratory for the synthesis and characterization of soft nanomaterials; he has published 37 papers and coauthored 10 patents.
Details:
| Location: | D'ignazio's Towne House |
| Times: | 5:00 PM Executive Committee Meeting 5:45 PM Social "Hour" 6:30 PM Dinner 7:30 PM Presentation |
| Cost: | $30 |
| Dinner Choices: | Crab Cake Grilled chicken Breast w lemon butter sauce Eggplant Parmesan |
NOTICE TO STUDENTS AND FACULTY: Full-time students with valid ID may attend dinner meetings at half-price. Faculty members at colleges and universities are urged to bring one or more students to the meeting. If they do, they also can attend at half-price.