Our Students' Work

Our Students' work is a clear example of the process from start to finish of what the students will work on over the summer. Each student runs their own research and will present their final work at the end to their colleagues, professors, and family at Gavilan Community College. 

Alexis Solorio - Patrick Jurney 

Silvestre Gonzalez & Keola Sylva - John Lee  

Silvestre Gonzalez and Keola Sylva worked on the design, prototyping, and testing of a microfluidic device for isolating particles in nanoliter-scale water droplets. They exercised a concept of fluid shearing between immiscible fluids (oil and water), whereby water was segmented into droplets by trapping in a series of small wells (with gaps as small as 10 µm) patterned between two parallel microchannels. The students exercised skills in computer-aided design, photolithography, silicone casting, plasma bonding, microfluidic interfacing, and fluorescence microscopy. The students compared shearing behavior at different flow rates and demonstrated the feasibility of trapping 20 µm polystyrene beads in the patterned wells. The students also prototyped millimeter-scale devices using resin-based 3-D printing molds for early proof-of-concept testing.

Riccardo Conte & Erick Rayos - David Parent