• #microphotography

    The Microscopic Chambers of the Sea

    Albert Folch is a bioengineering professor at the University of Washington whose Folcher Lab is devoted to building better tools for cell cultures. As he puts it on his lab website, "We apply micro- and nanofabrication techniques to quantitatively design the micro/nanofluidic environment and/or the underlying substrate of cultured cells under large numbers of conditions." And Folcher loves to turn his creations into art — microfluidic art, to be exact. Above, you can see one of his creations, a device that contains a microscopic amount of fluid. See more of the gorgeous, abstract art he's created under the 'scope over the years. More »
  • #scienceart

    Microfluidic Art on a Chip

    J Tanner Nevil is a microfluidics expert who occasionally likes to turn his laboratory into an art studio. Here, you can see that he's turned his microfluidic chip — often called a "lab on a chip" — into a painting made entirely by piping tiny amounts of colored fluid into canals that are about 20 microns in width. All the colored lines you see here are actually miniscule grooves full of liquid. Why did Nevil and his student Austin Day create this? They wanted a "microfluidic chip that looked cool." Check out some more micro-fluid art below. More »