UW Bioengineering’s first BioEngage Symposium was held December 10, 2015. This inaugural full-day event gathered students, faculty and industry professionals representing a wide variety of biotechnology companies and nonprofit research organizations together to discuss their work, identify collaboration opportunities, network and build connections.

The event provided a forum for industry partners to learn about research, design and other capability in BioE. Event participants had the opportunity to discuss mutual research interests and project needs. The event also helped inform the BioE community about hiring needs and internship opportunities in industry.

At the event, students, faculty and industry partners presented short talks focusing on applications of biochemistry and devices for in vitro diagnostics. Talks covered diverse topics under the event’s overarching theme, including biomaterial and surface characterization, point-of-care diagnostic devices, protein immunoassays and molecular assays, and engineered reagents and affinity molecules. Talks were broken up throughout the day with networking breaks and poster sessions, and the event concluded with a reception.

The BioEngage team sincerely thanks all attendees who presented talks and posters, and who made the event a success. Upcoming BioEngage events are being planned for 2016. To learn more about program benefits, to be invited to future events and help BioEngage plan activities that would benefit the community, contact the BioEngage team.

UW Bioengineering’s BioEngage program seeks to build mutually beneficial relationships with biomedical industry, with the goal of increasing engagement of BioE students and faculty with the biomedical translation-commericalization sector (for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, entrepreneurs and investors). Learn more about BioEngage.

BioEngage Symposium talks:

Yager Lab – Infectious Disease Diagnosis Using Microfluidics (Paul Yager, Lisa Lafleur, Caitlin Anderson)

PATH – Diagnostics Program Overview and Case Study (Allison Golden)

B. Ratner Lab – Analysis of Blood, Milk, Water, or Almost Anything Else: the Tricorder Reinvented (Buddy Ratner)

Intellectual Ventures/Global Good – Increasing LFA Sensitivity for Limited Resource Applications (Kevin P. Nichols)

MilliporeSigma – Reagents, Materials and Assay Design & Development (Michael Mansfield, Mahmoud Zubaidi)

D. Ratner Lab – Advancing Silicon Photonics for Clinical Applications (Shon Schmidt) 

Northshore Bio – Molecular Detection using Tunable Nanopores: Genome-Scale DNA and RNA Sequencing Chips

Daggett Lab – Towards Early Diagnosis of Amyloid Diseases (Valerie Daggett)

Micronics – Near Patient Molecular Testing (Fred Battrell, CTO)

InBios – Diagnostics Company for Infectious Diseases and Cancer (Shivani Dharmaraja, James Needham)

Thomas Lab – Activatable Antibody Mimics (Shivani Gupta)

Lutz Lab – Engineering Advanced Nucleic Acid Tests for Resource-Limited Settings (Barry Lutz, Nuttada Panpradist, Amy Oreskovic)

Folch Lab – 3D-printed microfluidics for personalized medicine (Albert Folch)

GenPrime – D-Cipher: Enabling, Interpreting and Connecting IVD Tests (Marie Miller)

Posner Lab – Next Generation of Highly Sensitive Point-of-Care Immunoassays (Jonathan Posner)

MEMS, Microfluidics and Nanofabrication at UW – Microelectromechanical Systems, Microfluidics and Nanofabrication at UW (Karl Bohringer, Hal Holmes)

Castner Lab – Molecular Analysis Facility: Surface Analysis, Microscopy and Spectroscopy Tools for Biomedical Research (David Castner)

Seelig Lab – DNA Nanotechnology Meets Paper-Based Diagnostics (Georg Seelig, Sifeng Chen, Randolph Lopez)

ELITech – ELITechGroup Molecular Diagnostics: Brief Overview (Nic Vermeulen)

Gao Lab – Multiplexed Bioassays via DNA Encoding (Pavel Zrazhevskiy)

Nexgenia – Polymer-based Nanotechnology for Diagnostics and Life Sciences Applications (Barrett Nehilla)