NEW BEE COURSE

BEE4550: Biologically Inspired Microsystems Engineering Fall 2012, Cornell

Mingming Wu mw272@cornell.edu

Description

This course will cover fundamental principles that nature uses to build and control living systems at molecular, cellular and tissue levels; engineering principles for fabricating micro- and nano- meter scale devices.  The course will focus on solving problems at the intersections of biology and microsystems engineering. The lab session will provide students with hands-on experiences in cell culture, micro-fabricated devices and live cell imaging.

A drawing of Escherichia coli (30,000x, by Goodsell). E.coli is a micro-swimmer

invented by nature. It has its own set of nano-scale motors and micro-scale propellers.

Essentials: This course (3 credit option) satisfies BEE lab requirement, as well as Biological, Bioprocessing and Environmental engineering concentration requirement. Lectures Wed/Fri 8:40 – 9:55am; Labs Mon 1:25 – 4:25pm.  If you do not take the course with the lab component, it is 2 credit hours; otherwise, it is 3 credit hours.

Course content

1. Length and time scales in biological systems.
2. Molecular motors.
3. Cellular motility and chemotaxis.
4. Radom walk in biology at micro-scale, active matters.
5. Cell – cell communication

1. Prokaryotic cell communication (quorum sensing, cell community…)
2. Eukaryotic cell communication (auto/paracrine signaling, haptotaxis…)
3. Cellular network formation in the context of vascular and angiogenesis.

6. Micro-valves, pumps, and microcirculation system.
7. Transport at micrometer scale in living systems.
8. Introduction to transport in micro/nano- fabricated systems.
9. Manipulating biomolecules, cells using Microsystems engineering
10. Applications of microsystems engineering in medicine and environmental engineering.