School of Engineering Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering 87 Big Data: Bioinformatic Analysis of Single-Cell Genomic Data Supervisor: WU Angela Ruohao / CBE Student: KIM Hyunggyu / BCB Course: UROP 2100, Fall Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has long been considered one of the most lethal diseases among cancer types. Alongside gene mutation, the tumor microenvironment prevents an effective therapeutic approach against PDAC. Desmoplastic and immune cold characteristic of PDAC hinders PDAC from the use of common anti-cancer approaches, including chemotherapy. Although the novel approach of combination therapies (immunotherapy and neoadjuvant chemotherapy) is gaining interest, current studies suggest that these treatments are not effective. As the only options for PDAC patients are chemotherapy and surgery, in this review, bioinformatic tools are used to observe tumor microenvironment in single-cell resolution to assess chemotherapy. Single-cell RNA sequencing has successfully recapitulated complex heterogeneity of tumor microenvironment in PDAC, emphasizing the difficulty in treating PDAC. As a further extension, I have evaluated whether chemotherapy effectively reduces tumor cell population and immune checkpoint marker expression. Interdisciplinary Bioengineering: Microfluidic Device for Cell Manipulation/Culture and Molecular Biology Supervisor: WU Angela Ruohao / CBE Student: CHANDRA Jones Edbert / BIOT Course: UROP 1100, Summer As a growing field, microfluidics application has aided the development of various fields including life science. This is only made possible through the various microfabrication techniques such as photolithography and soft lithography. This study presents the stepwise microfabrication techniques and the application of the molded microfluidic devices for high-throughput cell culture with a focus on photolithography as the most crucial technology in microfluidic device fabrication. The microfluidic devices molded through soft lithography included the T-junction chips for the generation of spheroid droplets and microwell chips for the loading of spheroid droplets and its subsequent culturing processes. Through these foundational methods, the development of high-throughput microfluidic platform is made possible for its application in research and development. Developing Stable Solution Inks for Perovskite Solar Cells Supervisor: ZHOU Yuanyuan / CBE Student: KOROTKOVA Arina Leonidovna / CENG Course: UROP 1100, Spring The defects on the surface of perovskite solar cells affect stability and result in losses in the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the devices. Post-treatment of the top surface provides a chance at optimising the Voc and increasing the stability. Here, a trimming solvent (TS), a mixture of 2-methoxyethanol acting as a solvent to dissolve perovskites and chlorobenzene as an anti-solvent, was applied after the perovskite layer. This method allows for removal of the defective top layer with shallow depth by adjusting the composition ratio of the trimming solvent. Top surface morphology was studied using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The modified perovskite thin films showed improved root mean square roughness (Rq) and average roughness (Ra) measurements at TS 10:90 ratio of solvent to anti-solvent. This research will provide a micro-level insight on the toughness information of perovskite top surfaces, which may further influence the device performance of perovskite solar cells.
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