Neil Convery is a PhD student from the University of Glasgow who joined the Hybrid Technology Hub in May. In 2017, he graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MEng in Biomedical Engineering. Since graduating, Neil has been working in Prof. Nikolaj Gadegaard’s lab in Glasgow developing new means of combining rapid-prototyping and high-throughput fabrication of microfluidic devices. Namely, through 3D printing an inlay, injection moulding to replicate, and ultrasonic welding to seal, he has demonstrated that large batches of identical microfluidic devices can be produced in one working day at a fraction of the cost compared with clean-room and advanced manufacturing techniques such as replica moulding from micro-machined silicon. Concomitantly, these thermoplastic devices have reduced small molecule absorption and thus increased performance over polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) devices which are the current standard in organ-on-a-chip applications.
Neil’s has travelled to the University of Oslo to collaborate further with the biologists and chemists that would benefit most from microfluidic technology. Here, he hopes to integrate the Hybrid Technology Hub’s existing organoid technologies into thermoplastic microfluidic chips and demonstrate this as a viable and standard organ-on-a-chip platform. Currently at the Hybrid Technology Hub, Neil is setting up 3D printing and rapid prototyping infrastructure to allow the centre to prototype their own devices in the future. Furthermore, He will be working with both the liver and pancreatic organoids to illustrate the versatility of the chip fabrication platform. During his stay, Neil is working with Dr. Gareth Sullivan, Dr. Hanne Scholz, and Prof. Steven Wilson to further develop the microfluidic platform and interface the chips into mass spectrometry.