Thesis

We are constantly offering Bachelor and Master thesis projects. Please contact us for further details.

Possible projects involve:

- active microrheology of living cells for studying cellular responses to stress.

- building microfluidic devices as artifical lung or as microscale bioreactors.

- determining the mechanical properties of cells using highly sophisticated spectroscopic techniques.

 

In detail:

*Wiggling beads - formation of focal adhesions

Focal adhesion are large protein complexes that connect the cytoskeleton with the extracellular matrix. Students will follow  the formation of this complex using fibronection (an ECM protein) beads as markers for an optical trap.

 

*Poking the skeleton - mechanics of extracted cytokeletons.

The student will examine the mechanics of extracted cytoskeletal elements using atomic force microscopy.

 

*Squeezing the cells - mechanics as a separation tool

The student will build a microfluidic chamber for the rheological separation of cells.

 

*The artificial lung - a mcrofluidic chamber for cell-air interface.

The student will build a reactor chamber mimicking a lung.