We develop micro systems and microfluidic technologies that can allow for:

a. Sensing platforms for the detection of bio-species, nutrients, micro-biome composition among others.
b. In Vitro models (soil on chip): Soil is the habitat of countless organisms and encompasses an enormous variety of dynamic environmental conditions. While it is evident that a thorough understanding of how organisms interact with the soil environment may have substantial ecological and economical impact, current laboratory-based methods depend on reductionist approaches that are incapable of simulating natural diversity. The application of Lab-on-a-Chip or microfluidic technologies to organismal studies is an emerging field, where the unique benefits afforded by system miniaturisation offer new opportunities for the experimentalist. Indeed, precise spatiotemporal control over the microenvironments of soil organisms in combination with high-resolution imaging has the potential to provide an unprecedented view of biological events at the single-organism or single-cell level, which in turn opens up new avenues for environmental and organismal studies.

Based within our host institute, Dublin City University (DCU), the Fraunhofer Project Centre for Embedded Bioanalytical Systems (FPC@DCU) is a German-Irish Research Collaboration between the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (Fraunhofer IPT, Aachen, Germany) and Dublin City University (DCU).

Our centre designs, develops and manufactures microfluidic devices for a variety of applications areas from human diagnostics to farming and environmental detection and remediation.