Team Members
Mikhail Bagadion, Danielle Garcia, Joseph Knebl, Juan Munoz Sanchez, Ricardo Page, Brendan Reiss, Charles Stone, Jonathan Strathdee
Abstract
When designing BIOS, our objective was to create a perfectly balanced product that could perform the operations of multiple existing bioreactors within a single system. Current devices on the market are designed to perform a single function. BIOS is capable of autonomously injecting test fluids, managing waste, and taking optical density and fluorescence intensity measurements. BIOS was designed with modularity in mind: BIOS is able to perform three separate experiments within separate testing chambers, each with its own test fluid, environmental conditions, and mixing patterns. If a customer does not need a system that performs multiple experiments, BIOS can be modified to contain one testing chamber for a cheaper price, setting us apart from any other bioreactor. BIOS is separated into seven primary subsystems: Main Structure, Mixing Element, Dispenser, Heating/Cooling, Fluid Management, Sensor/Light Source, and Waste Management. The most important aspect of BIOS is our testing chamber, which contains the mixing element. Temperature within the testing chamber is regulated using a liquid heating/cooling system. Gases within the testing chamber are dispensed using a series of solenoid valves. The mixing element can house a well plate or a set of conical tubes, and can move in a linear, circular, or double-helical fashion. The dispensing system is a 3-D cartesian gantry that has the ability to access each testing chamber to dispense liquid to each well plate. Attached to this gantry is our fluid, waste, sensor systems to allow them to access all of the well plates.