Design of Microfluidic Biochips: Connecting Algorithms and Foundations of Chip Design to Biochemistry and the Life Sciences

Summary form only. Advances in microfluidic technologies have led to the emergence of biochip devices for automating laboratory procedures in biochemistry and molecular biology. Corresponding systems are revolutionizing a diverse range of applications, e.g. air quality studies, point-of-care clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, and DNA sequencing?with an increasing market. For clinical diagnostics, it has been predicted that we will soon see 15 billion diagnostic tests per year worldwide. The session will consist of four talks on complementary aspects of these emerging technologies. The speakers will describe emerging technologies for integrated microfluidics, including synthesis, chip-level optimization, fault-tolerance design, and sample preparation applications. We believe that the special session will generate interest in this topic, leading to more research, aiming at delivering complete EDA tool-flows for this emerging area.