Short CV: Since 1999, Roland Zengerle is full professor at the faculty of engineering at the University of Freiburg, Germany. He is also an executive board member of “Hahn-Schickard“, a non-profit organization supporting industry by contract research in developing innovative products based on MEMS technologies.
Since 2011 Dr. Zengerle is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). He was chairperson and/or steering committee member of numerous international conferences including IEEE-MEMS (2006), World Micromachine Summit (2010), MicroTAS (2013), Transducers (2019), etc.
The research of Prof. Zengerle and his team is focused on microfluidics and specializes in lab-on-a-chip systems, Point-of-Care diagnostics and cell handling technologies. He published more than 400 research papers, reviews and book chapters and his research activities lead to 10 Spin-Off’s currently employing about 240 scientists and engineers.
Title: The adventure of commercializing microfluidics
The talk will focus on three categories of microfluidic devices and/or solutions:
- Micro- and nanoliter dispensing
- Molecular diagnostics at the Point-of-Care by centrifugal microfluidics
- Absolut quantification of proteins and protein-protein interactions
The presentation provides an overview of challenges, pitfalls, and success stories in trying to translate academic visions into successful products by fostering and founding spin-off companies:
- Biofluidix (2005; acquired by Hamilton in 2022)
- Cytena (2014; acquired by BICO in 2019))
- SpinDiag (2016)
- Actome (2017)
- Cytena Bioprocess Solutions (2019; acquired by Leadgene Biomedical in 2025)
- Dermagnostix (2020)
- Endress+Hauser BioSense (2021)
- ionysis (2022) and
- Pico BioSciences (2025)
- AddimusBio (2025)
- MillionMolecules (currently in formation)
Meanwhile, three of them have been acquired by global market leaders in laboratory automation, and two have been restarted after insolvency.
The Adventure of Commercializing Microfluidics
Roland Zengerle, Hahn-Schickard, GERMANY
Short CV: Dr. Anton J. Nagy is the founder and CEO of Integrated Lab Solutions (ILS), a Berlin-based provider of automated chemical R&D testing systems and contract research services. He holds degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute and completed his PhD in catalysis at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society. Prior to founding ILS in 2005, he held technical and leadership positions at Bayer AG and Avantium. His expertise spans catalysis, reactor design, laboratory automation, high-throughput experimentation, and process development.
Title: Precision Fluid Handling in Low-Flow Reactor Systems: Challenges, Lessons Learned, and Future Needs
Low-flow reactor systems have become increasingly important tools for catalyst development, reaction screening, and process intensification. By reducing material consumption while enabling operation under industrially relevant conditions, these systems provide researchers with powerful platforms for accelerating process development. However, achieving reliable and reproducible experimental results depends critically on the ability to accurately measure, distribute, dose, and control fluids across a wide range of operating conditions.
This presentation examines fluid handling from a system-level perspective, drawing on practical experience from the design and operation of high-throughput low-flow reactor platforms at Integrated Lab Solutions (ILS). Rather than focusing on individual components in isolation, the talk explores how flow sensors, pumps, valves, pressure regulators, and control strategies interact to determine overall system performance.
Particular attention will be given to challenges encountered at extremely low flow rates, including flow measurement uncertainty, broad turndown requirements, pressure stability, and flow distribution across parallel reactor networks. Examples will illustrate where passive approaches such as flow restriction are sufficient and where active flow control becomes essential, particularly in reaction systems where fluid dynamics directly influence catalyst performance and experimental interpretation.
The presentation concludes with an outlook on future opportunities for the microfluidics community, including advanced sensing technologies, improved pressure and flow control architectures, and novel approaches for integrating measurement and control into increasingly automated research platforms. The goal is to identify the next generation of fluid handling technologies required to support faster, more reliable chemical process development.
Short CV: Dr. Bonnie L. Gray is a Professor of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University in Canada, a Fraser Health affiliated researcher, and on the board of the Vancouver Medical Device Development Center. Dr. Gray has over 140 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications, and has given more than 35 invited, keynote, and plenary presentations at international conferences, in the areas of novel materials and fabrication techniques for biomedical and microfluidic devices and systems; flexible and wearable microfluidics and biosensors; additive manufacturing of microdevices; and chip-based cell research platforms. She is on the Editorial Boards of PLOS One and the IOP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, and was general co-chair of IEEE Nano 2025.
Title: Magnetic Polymer Microfluidic Actuators for Flexible and Wearable Microfluidic Flow Control
Magnetic polymer actuators have become an increasingly important class of smart materials for microfluidic flow control. Over the past two decades, research has progressed from ferrite-filled elastomers and magnetorheological composites toward high-performance hard-magnetic polymer composites capable of large deformation, programmable shape change, wireless actuation, and multifunctional operation. The resulting materials combine the compliance and manufacturability of polymers with the remote actuation and force-generation capabilities of permanent magnetic materials. We have concentrated on the development of permanently magnetized polymer composites specifically optimized for microfluidic flow control and biomedical MEMS applications. Beginning with rare-earth magnetic powder embedded in PDMS and SU-8, we demonstrated some of the earliest hard-magnetic polymer composites designed for integrated microfluidic systems. We have characterized our materials both magnetically and mechanically so that they can be more easily adapted to new actuator structures, and have developed clear criteria and metrics for optimizing the design of microfluidic actuators based of hard magnetic soft polymer materials. Permanent micromagnets fabricated from our materials have achieved remanent magnetizations of approximately 60–63 emu/g and coercivities exceeding 5200 G, providing a foundation for a family of microfluidic actuators including artificial cilia, flap valves, and membrane actuators, for applications including reconfigurable valve arrays, micropumps, and mechanobiology platforms. More recently, our work has expanded to textile-printable magnetic inks and wearable actuators. We place these innovations into the context of the worldwide diversity of research into magnetic polymer microfluidic systems, and discuss the role that permanently magnetized microfluidic actuator materials have played in advancing labs-on-chip systems.
Short CV: Dr. Darwin R. Reyes is a project leader at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and a Lecturer at the Division of Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University. His work at NIST has recently focused on developing integrated electronic capabilities to manipulate and measure cells in organ-on-a-chip devices, enabling real-time Heart-on-a-Chip and cancer cell-based testing for drug development and toxicity assays. Dr. Reyes is also a Co-founder and Chair of the Microfluidics Association, and the Chair of the International Microphysiological Systems Society’s Standardization Interest Group. Dr. Reyes was recently bestowed with the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s Emerging Leader Award and the PML/NIST Outstanding Achievement in Measurement Services and Standards Award.
Title: Organ-on-a-Chip Platforms with Integrated Sensors for Multiparametric, Real-Time Cellular Responses
In vitro preclinical testing is an essential step in drug development. However, the use of animals has its limitations, as demonstrated by the low success rate (< 10%) when going from Preclinical testing to Clinical trials. Therefore, new approach methods (NAMs) are needed to curtail the shortcomings in the drug development pathway. Microphysiological Systems (MPS)/Organ-on-a-Chip (OoC) platforms offer a well-controlled microenvironment in which human cells can be exposed to drugs and chemicals. However, with a few exceptions, these platforms still use endpoint readouts, in which results are obtained by ending the experiment to analyze cell responses at a specific time point. Endpoint assays require higher throughput than approaches that measure cell responses in real-time and continuously. Moreover, a lot of important information regarding the effects of drugs and toxicants is lost when endpoint measurements are used. Thus, integrating sensing capabilities into these platforms provides a more complete dynamic picture of cell behavior rather than a snapshot in time. Therefore, my team has developed a platform that integrates electrodes on both sides of porous polyester membranes to manipulate cells via dielectrophoretic trapping and measure cell behavior, such as cell migration and heart cell beating. In addition, this system is also used as a multiparametric platform in which cells on both sides of the membrane are simultaneously probed for barrier integrity and changes in the frequency and amplitude of heart cell beating. This platform will enable new ways to assess drug efficacy and safety through a multiparametric approach with a promising future in preclinical testing.