Microfluidic Horizons 2026

Session

Tuesday 19/05, 14 - 19; Room 35

Tu2-B

May 19, 2026, 2:00 PM

175. Microfluidic control of nutrient microgradients and lag phases in spatially confined bacterial monolayers

5/19/26, 3:00 PM

Cells, microbes, and extracellular vesicles manipulation

Oral

Nutrient availability and physical constraints strongly regulate bacterial growth in microscale environments. In spatially structured systems, confinement, fluid flow, and consumption by the bacterial population generate nutrient microgradients that lead to heterogeneous growth and spatially organised metabolic states. Bacteria adapt to multiple carbon sources either through co-utilisation,...

179. Stronger at the seams: Antibiotic stress enhances amino acid leakage and cross-feeding

5/19/26, 3:20 PM

Cells, microbes, and extracellular vesicles manipulation

Oral

Microbial communities perform essential ecosystem functions, from driving biogeochemical cycles to aiding digestion in the gut. Their metabolic diversity creates both redundancy and complementarity. Over time, some microbes discard costly biosynthetic pathways (as described by the Black Queen Hypothesis), becoming auxotrophs reliant on cross-feeding nutrients from neighbours. In turn,...

92. Novel Microfluidic Systems to Simulate Multiscale Bacterial Transport Through a Contaminated Aquifer

5/19/26, 3:40 PM

Ecology and sustainable processes

Oral

Subsurface microbial communities play critical roles in the attenuation of anthropogenic contaminants, as well as global biogeochemical cycling. It has been established that bacterial partitioning (i.e., whether the organism is sediment attached or planktonic) may drastically affect the levels of metabolic activity and rates of bio-degradation. At the highly contaminated Field Research...

90. Multiscale modelling of biofilm extracellular matrix using ‘resistance-in-series’ effect

Dr Raghu Krishna Moorthy (University College Dublin)

5/19/26, 4:00 PM

Ecology and sustainable processes

Oral

Biofilms are complex communities collectively organized by microbial cells embedded within an extracellular matrix. The analysis of biophysical interactions [1] between matrix environment and microbial cells [2] is an active topic in the field of bacterial multicellularity. Modelling of these extracellular environmental cues driving the biofilm formation require a revisit to fundamentals of...

169. Insights Into Flow-Driven Platelet Dynamics and Thrombus Morphology

Dr Eleonora Pero (Department of Chemical, Materials and Industrial Production Engineering, University of Naples "Federico II")

5/19/26, 5:20 PM

Flow, wetting, and transport phenomena

Oral

The flow-induced morphology of platelet aggregates is emerging as a key mechanobiological indicator of thrombotic risk and coagulation disorders. Thrombus formation is a dynamic process in which flowing platelets adhere to a pro-thrombotic surface, aggregate, and grow, progressively reshaping the vessel wall topography and altering the local hemodynamic environment. While shear forces and...

65. Combining inertial pre-enrichment and immunomagnetic sorting for CTC isolation from blood

5/19/26, 5:40 PM

Flow, wetting, and transport phenomena

Oral

The isolation of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) directly from blood by liquid biopsy could lead to a paradigm shift in clinical cancer care by contributing to earlier diagnosis and the development of personalized treatment [1]. Nevertheless, CTCs must be recovered with high recovery rates and high purity within a short processing time, and through a user-friendly workflow. These specific...

76. Mimicking sap transport in vascular plants using microfluidics

Julien Renaudeau

5/19/26, 6:00 PM

Flow, wetting, and transport phenomena

Oral

Sap transport in vascular plants is ensured by a complex network of two "microfluidic channels", xylem and phloem, coupled by a biological membrane. Evapotranspiration drives a flow of almost pure water through the xylem, from the roots to the leaves. In parallel, the sugars produced in the leaves by photosynthesis generate a large turgor pressure allowing their transport in the phloem towards...

43. Temporal signature of Shear Stress Regulates Renal Epithelial Mechanotransduction

SUPRATIM SAHA (Indian Institute of Technology Madras)

5/19/26, 6:20 PM

Organ-on-a-chip and translational models

Oral

Mechanical forces generated by fluid flow are essential regulators of epithelial physiology in vivo, particularly in renal tubules where cells experience sustained yet dynamically varying fluid shear stress (FSS). While the influence of shear magnitude on epithelial behavior has been extensively studied, how temporal variations in shear independent of spatial heterogeneity and geometric...