News and agenda

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision, for example underwater or for medical imaging. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health. The work is now published in Nature Communications.

Vijayendra Umesh Shastri from the Precions and Microsystems Engineering Department has been awarded a NOW-XS grant for his quantitative de-cellurarization with single-cell resolution project.

Lidy Fratila-Apachitei and Murali Ghatkesar received a Cohesion grant to investigate how 3-D printed pillars with features in the sub-micrometre range can affect adhesion and mechanics of living progenitor cells at single cell level. Together with postdoc researcher Livia Angeloni and the other collaborators, they developed and applied a novel method based on fluid force microscopy.

Understanding the mechanobiology of glioma cells is of paramount importance for prospective treatment screening of this brain tumour. Nastaran Barin and Angelo Accard developed, in a joint effort with Erasmus MC, biomimetic 3D structures via two-photon polymerization and cultured therein patient derived glioma cells.