Team Members
Peter Buckoski, Cristian Garcia, Andres Orta, Uriel Ostrowicz, Griffin Schobel, Elizabeth Scott, Andrew Tumlin
Abstract
The TriBio Autoreactor was designed for the proposed University of Florida Biofoundry with the objective of creating an autonomous microbioreactor for the purpose of culturing microorganisms for scientific research. The TriBio Autoreactor combines the capabilities of four standalone machines that are currently needed for bacterial culturing within one system. The TriBio Autoreactor provides incubation, sample handling, sample shaking, and cell culture monitoring in one product. The TriBio Autoreactor also has the capability to independently culture up to three different biological samples simultaneously, which allows the user to enhance their culturing throughput by threefold. In order to fully carry out the customer’s needs, the design was divided into six essential subsystems: liquid handling, environmental control, mobility/shaking, user interface, overall housing, and the feedback control subsystem. Current microbioreactors require frequent human intervention to produce adequate amounts of microbial culture. The subsystems for the TriBio Autoreactor come together and harmoniously synergize to not only create a functional product, but a product that transcends current technology to autonomously monitor and culture multiple microbial samples with independent growing conditions in a way that involves negligible user interaction.