Molecular and muscle strip mechanics in health and disease
Raphael Zonis
Project :
I have been involved with two distinct projects in the Lauzon Lab. The first project involved the trapping of individual airway smooth muscle cells on a microfluidic chip for the purpose of probing the contractile properties of airway smooth muscle at the single cell level. The current project I am working on is in collaboration with a research device company by the name of Aurora Scientific. The goal of the project is to use linear actuators manufactured by Aurora Scientific to automatically control the force applied to tissue strips of airway smooth muscle. The primary deliverable of this project is to create an automated system that can probe the contractile properties of smooth muscle, replacing the laborious, manual methods that are currently common practice.
I completed my Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering at McGill in the Summer of 2018, and pursued a Master’s of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Fall 2018.
