Colton Honored with Microfluidics on Glass Award

nanoprinting

Adira Colton, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD), received the Microfluidics on Glass award at the 28th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences—Micro-Total Analysis Systems (µTAS 2024), held in Montreal, Canada.

Colton, whose advisor is Associate Professor Ryan Sochol, received the award for her work “Investigation of the Scalability of POSS-Based Photomaterials for 3D-Printed Glass Microfluidics.”

Her research represents an interdisciplinary, collaborative endeavor with co-authors from Sochol’s Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory—including mechanical engineering B.S./M.S. students Ryan N. Halli, and Declan Fitzgerald—as well as chemical and biomolecular engineering Ph.D. student Mahima Srivastava and industry collaborator Dr. Kinneret Rand-Yadin, CEO and Founder of AkriVita.

“The ability to 3D nanoprint glass at sizes including both microns as well as millimeters has been a substantial challenge for the field,” Colton said. “Achieving this goal could have important implications in areas ranging from biomedical applications to optics and photonics.”

Sochol, Colton’s advisor and senior author of the work, said the results “represent a key first step towards building that bridge to one day enable glass technologies to be 3D nanoprinted across many length scales.”

The award continues Colton’s track-record of national and international accolades, including a Clark Doctoral Fellowship in 2021, a Microsoft Diversity in Robotics and Autonomy Ph.D. Fellowship in 2022, and the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2023.

Colton was also a finalist for both the Springer Nature Best Poster Award and the Microsystems & Nanoengineering/Springer Nature Outstanding Paper Award at the Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Workshop in 2022 and 2024, respectively.

The work is supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health as well as Maryland Industrial Partnerships in collaboration with Dr. Kinneret Rand-Yadin and AkriVita, who are working to translate the technology for commercial applications.

The Microfluidics on Glass Award—sponsored by IMT Masken und Teilungen AG of Switzerland—is given each year to an individual who has demonstrated exceptional technical advancement and innovation in the field of microfluidics or nanofluidics by using glass in a key aspect of their device.

Published October 31, 2024