Soper Group Attends ACS Midwest Regional Meeting

The University of Kansas, in Lawrence, KS, hosted the 2017 Midwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society October 18-20, 2017. Members of CBM2’s Soper Research Group presented their research via posters, lectures, and our first ever exhibitor booth. The exhibitor booth highlighted the Center’s work in several ways to draw interest from the over 600 participants at the meeting. Overview slides about the Center and each group member’s research project showed continuously on a television, while guests to the booth could view microfluidic chips through a microscope and peruse papers that were published with the associated chips. An attractive CBM2 banner drew visitors to the booth, where they enjoyed learning about the Center’s mission and capabilities through informational bookmarks, pens, and speaking with the students and postdocs who do the research.

When meeting attendees were not engaging with us at the exhibitor booth, they could learn about the Center’s work through the symposia and poster sessions offered throughout the three days. See below for a list of topics presented by the Soper Research Group, and check out the photo gallery to see pictures from the meeting.

Symposium talks:

  • Steven Soper: Starting Companies in the Biotech Industry
  • Camila Campos: Microfluidic devices for extracting cell-free DNA
  • Kumuditha Ratnayake: Integrated microfluidics system for the analysis of Circulating Multiple Myeloma Cells (CMMCs) using Fluorescent in-situ Hybridization (FISH) analysis
  • Brandon Young: Measuring the time-of-flight (TOF) of single molecules using dual beam laser-induced fluorescence
  • Bethany Gross: Fabrication of a mid-scale fluidic device for comprehensive molecular profiling from circulating markers
  • Charuni Amarasekara: Nanoscale electrophoresis separation of deoxynucleotide monophosphates
  • Malgorzata Witek: Microfluidics for isolation of orthogonal populations of circulating tumor cells

Poster presentations:

  • Eva Mohr: High-throughput microfluidic separation of plasma from whole blood for downstream biomarker detection
  • Joshua (Matt) Jackson: Microfluidic affinity purification of cancer-specific extracellular vesicles
  • Cong Kong: Label-free enumeration of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) using μ-Coulter counter
  • Jenny Conner: Nano-coulter counter for the quantification of extracellular vesicles
  • Wenting Hu: Evaluation of minimal residual disease in acute leukemia using microfluidics and spectral time-delayed integration multi-parameter flow cytometry
  • Uditha Athapattu: Nanoscale solid-phase enzymatic reactor for biopolymer (DNA/RNA) disassembly
  • Swarnagowri Vaidyanathan: Thermoplastic nanofluidic sensor for the fluorescence detection of chemotherapeutically induced damage in genomic DNA
  • Swathi Pullagurla: Microfluidic platform for isolation of extracellular vesicles: Potential stroke biomarkers
Dr. Bethany Gross and Charuni Amarasekara explain the Center’s research to an interested meeting attendee.
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Dr. Bethany Gross and Eva Mohr at the poster session.
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Dr. Bethany Gross in the CBM2 exhibitor booth.
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Dr. Bethany Gross presenting a poster at the ACS MWRM 2017.
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Brandon Young
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Cady Bush, Program Coordinator for KU’s Adams Institute, and Lindsey Roe, Program Assistant for the Center of BioModular Multiscale Systems for Precision Medicine.
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Dr. Camila Campos
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Dr. Camila Campos
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Soper group graduate student Charuni Amarasekara giving her talk “Nanoscale electrophoresis separation of deoxynucleotide monophosphates.”
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Graduate students Charuni Amarasekara and Eva Mohr at the ACS MWRM poster session.
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Charuni Amarasekara and Prof. Steven Soper check out the poster session at the ACS Midwest Regional Meeting.
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Graduate students Charuni Amarasekara and Swarnagowri Vaidyanathan.
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Everyone took turns manning the booth! From left: Charuni Amarasekara, Jenny Conner, and Dr. Bethany Gross.
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Dr. Cong Kong, visiting scholar from China, and Charuni Amarasekara at the ACS MWRM poster session.
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Dr. Bethany Gross volunteered to wear the ACS mascot Milli the Mole for an afternoon at the meeting. Milli and Soper Group graduate student Eva Mohr take a break from all of the talks to have a little fun!
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You don’t need a Mole costume to have fun at the ACS meeting! Eva Mohr, Dr. Bethany Gross, and Dr. Camila Campos have fun at the poster session.
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Eva Mohr
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Jenny Conner and Dr. Bethany Gross show off the guessing game we had at the exhibitor booth. Everyone had fun trying to guess how many colored centrifuge tubes were in the jar!
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Lindsey Roe and the ACS mascot, Milli the Mole.
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Lindsey Roe, program assistant for the Center.
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Soper at ACS
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A few members of the Soper Research Group, from left: Dr. Bethany Gross, Lindsey Roe, Eva Mohr, Wenting Hu, Uditha Athapattu, Charuni Amarasekara, Swarnagowri Vaidyanathan, Jenny Conner, and Dr. Cong Kong.
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Several Soper group members gathered on the rooftop of the Oread Hotel for an evening reception. From left: Dr. Camila Campos, Uditha Athapattu, Prof. Steven Soper, Eva Mohr, Jenny Conner, Charuni Amarasekara, Wenting Hu, Dr. Nick Larkey, Lindsey Roe, and Dr. Matt Jackson.
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Swarnagowri Vaidyanathan
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Wenting Hu and Swarnagowri Vaidyanathan discuss some of the projects the Center has with a visitor to the exhibitor booth.
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From left: Eva Mohr, Jenny Conner, Swarnagowri Vaidyanathan, Charuni Amarasekara, and Wenting Hu.
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