Testing the aerosol generation system with the bead capture chamber I designed.

Author: Abigail Lakey | Major: Biomedical Engineering | Semester: Spring 2023

This spring I had the opportunity to work as a research assistant in the Mechanobiology and Soft Materials Laboratory (MSML) under Dr. Kartik Balachandran. My role is to complete sub-projects under one of the lab’s primary projects, called Physiologically Relevant Nasal Airway-on-Chip Platform to Study Remodeling of the Respiratory Mucosa, led by Amanda Walls, a PhD student. Her project is focused on discovering how human nasal epithelial cells are affected by particulate matter, which is tiny solid particles or liquid droplets present in the air, such as that caused by pollution. My project is called Methods of Quantification and Capture of Aerosolized Particles for Respiratory Organ-on-Chip Testing. It is comprised of three goals: to determine the optimal settings for the aerosolizer system, to design and develop a method of capturing bead particles, and finally, to characterize the particle size and concentration at various aerosol flow rates. This spring I developed an airflow system involving the aerosolizer and determined many of the conditions it needs to run smoothly. I also designed and manufactured a custom chamber using a 3D printer, CNC mill, and laser cutter, which I will use to attempt to capture the aerosolized beads. Over the summer and this coming fall, I will finish verifying the best settings under which to run the airflow system. Then I will determine the best way to capture the beads, and finally, spend several months running experiments to find the particle sizes and concentrations at various aerosol flow rates. My final results will be used by Amanda to expose the nasal cells to the aerosolized beads.

Working at the lab has been a wonderful experience. I get to work with and learn from a fantastic team who are all bright, creative, hardworking, collaborative, and so encouraging. Amanda has been so fun to work with and train under. She is incredibly caring, patient, and positive, and is a great project lead. Dr. Balachandran is the best mentor I could ever imagine. He is kind and compassionate and an excellent teacher, and he builds my confidence while challenging me to grow to my highest potential. I truly am so blessed to be part of such an amazing team of people.

A hands-on project like this one can teach and strengthen skills in a way that regular class projects cannot. For the first time, I am learning how to design and manage my own project. In the beginning, the scale of my project and the unstructured nature of using equipment and designing a system with very little information was certainly intimidating. This is the largest project I have ever done – spanning two years. And while I have worked on many engineering projects in the past, this one had by far the least amount of starting information or instructions. The project goals were set, but there were almost no other experiments to read about from other people’s work to figure out exactly how to design the air system and chamber – it was mostly from scratch. But with the excellent guidance and support from Dr. Balachandran and Amanda, I quickly gained confidence and established myself. The challenges that were overwhelming at first are now part of what I really enjoy about this project. The lack of information from outside sources means that I just come up with a list of things to try and go for it, and take all the data from failed attempts to discover, one by one, the source of each problem, and then come up with a new list of what to try. The long list of failures just make each success that much more rewarding, and I am excited to see what the next several months brings me. Be on the lookout for my final presentation and honors thesis next spring!