Lab on a Chip

Publ

ishe

d on

14

Apr

il 20

15. D

ownl

oade

d on

15/

04/2

015

00:1

6:58

.

EDITORIAL View Article OnlineView Journal

This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015

National Institute of Standards and Technology

(NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, USA.

E-mail: darwin.reyes@nist.gov

† Any opinions or views expressed in the followingarticle are entirely those of the author and do notrepresent the views of the journal, Lab on a Chip, orThe Royal Society of Chemistry.

Fig. 1 Shilpa Sivashankar (representing David Castro) of KAUST (Annual MicroTAS Art in Science Award presented by Darwin Reyesof LOC/Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) (center right) and AlbeWashington (right).

Fig. 2 MicroTAS Art in Science 2014 award winner “The Sphere”, sthe Department of Electrical Engineering, KAUST (Saudi Arabia).

Cite this: DOI: 10.1039/c5lc90049b

DOI: 10.1039/c5lc90049b

www.rsc.org/loc

The art in science of MicroTAS: the 2014 issue†

Darwin R. Reyes

center left) receives the 7thof NIST (left), Harpal Minhasrt Folch of the University of

For the 7th year in a row the Art inScience award competition, sponsoredby Lab on a Chip (LOC) and theNational Institute of Standards andTechnology (NIST), took place at the18th International Conference of Minia-turized Systems for Chemistry and LifeSciences held in San Antonio, Texas(USA) in October 2014. Out of 25 sub-missions the award was presented toDavid Castro from King Abdullah Uni-versity of Science and Technology(KAUST), Saudi Arabia (Fig. 1) for theimage titled “The Sphere”, which is fea-tured on the cover of this issue (Fig. 2).The image is a micrograph of an aque-ous droplet hanging between two fluidsin a square cuvette.1 This 40 μL dropletwas formed between a layer ofperfluorohexane and mineral oil, and itis comprised of agglutinated functional-ized latex beads mixed with humanC-reactive proteins. This extraordinaryimage, although of a very small droplet,could give the impression of a celestialbody as seen through the window of afuturistic space ship.

Since the establishment of the Artin Science Award 7 years ago, the Lab ona Chip journal has portrayed on itscover some of the most impressive

images from the MicroTAS conference.The images shown on the cover and

in the editorials that announce thewinners are considered by many to

Lab Chip

ubmitted by David Castro of

Lab on a ChipEditorial

Fig. 3 Award 1st runner up - “Wicking glass channels”, submitted by Manuel Ochoa of Purdue Univer-sity. This image shows two streams of dyes on cracked glass overlapping at the junction of a centralchannel on soda-lime glass. The cracked glass structure allows for rapid wicking and mixing of liquids.

Fig. 4 Award 2nd runner up - “Acoustic Streaming Effects”, submitted by Po-Hsun Huang ofPennsylvania State University. The image depicts acoustic streaming patterns produced when apiezoelectric transducer is used to generate acoustic oscillations around the tips of the triangular,solid sharp-edges inside a microfluidic channel.

Fig. 5 Award 3rd runner up – “SEM of a highly porous polymer”, submitted by Florian Lapierreof RMIT. This electron micrograph portrays a highly porous polymeric bead produced from whatis called high internal phase emulsion or HIPE. The process occurs inside a droplet-based micro-fluidic device and the bead is cross-linked using UV irradiation.

Publ

ishe

d on

14

Apr

il 20

15. D

ownl

oade

d on

15/

04/2

015

00:1

6:58

. View Article Online

have great artistic value. It seems asthough in the same way that micro-fluidics have found a scientific niche ata dimensional scale where differentthan the usual laws dominate, the artthat is found at the microfluidic “scale”can produce artistic features that areexclusively seen at this scale. One com-mon example of a microfluidic featureis the common laminar flow. Thistype of flow can be tweaked in many dif-ferent ways so that many images ofgreat artistic value can be generatedwith a single device. This, and the con-stant pursuit of new types of devices bythe scientific community makes themicroTAS Art in Science award competi-tion more challenging each year andat the same time an invaluable sourceof art.

The selection committee for the2014 Art in Science award includedrepresentatives from industry, acade-mia, government and scientific pub-lishers. This year's committee was com-posed of Omar Jina from Dolomite,Prof. Albert Folch from the Universityof Washington, Darwin Reyes fromNIST and Harpal Minhas from LOC/Royal Society of Chemistry. Severalcriteria were taken into account whenconsidering each of the submissions.Specifically, the submissions werejudged for their originality, scientificmerit, visual appeal, and suitability fora Lab on a Chip front cover. As in pre-vious years, the selection committeehad a difficult task when scrutinizingthe images to select the finalists andthe winner of the award. The judgesfirst agreed on the top four submis-sions, followed by deliberations and afinal vote that ultimately decided theselection of the winner. The top 3runners-up for the 2014 Art in Scienceaward are as follows:

1st runner up - “Wicking glass chan-nels” by Manuel Ochoa of Purdue Uni-versity (Fig. 3).

2nd runner up - “Acoustic StreamingEffects” by Po-Hsun Huang of Pennsyl-vania State University (Fig. 4).

3rd runner up - “Scanning electronmicrograph of a highly porous polymer”by Florian Lapierre of Royal MelbourneInstitute of Technology (RMIT) (Fig. 5).

Lab Chip This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015

Lab on a Chip Editorial

Publ

ishe

d on

14

Apr

il 20

15. D

ownl

oade

d on

15/

04/2

015

00:1

6:58

. View Article Online

Acknowledgements

The Art in Science award is sponsoredand supported by MicroTAS, the Chemi-cal and Biological Microsystems Society(CBMS), the Lab on a Chip journal, andNIST. The award consists of a monetary

This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015

prize ($2,500), an award certificate, andthe coveted front cover of the Lab on aChip journal. Please check the MicroTAS2015 conference website for furtherdetails regarding the submission ofimages for the next MicroTAS Confer-ence in Gyeongju, Korea.

Reference

1 S. Sivashankar, D. Castro, U. Buttner

and I. G. Foulds, Real-Time Agglutina-tion within a Microdroplet in a ThreePhase Fluidic Well for Detection of Bio-markers, MicroTAS, 2014, 2097–2100.

Lab Chip