SPEAKER PROFILE



Dr. Emmanuel Delamarche
Senior Manager, Spiden AG

Switzerland

Ultraminiaturized bio-assays by bending liquids

Abstract

Numerous medical devices and diagnostic platforms aim at detecting biomarkers in complex samples. In fact, diagnostics are ubiquitous in healthcare because they support prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. There is clearly an urgent need for bringing point-of-care diagnostics to a next level in terms of speed and precision, and multiplexing capabilities. In this presentation, I will detail some of the former work I contributed to, while at IBM Research - Zurich, on new concepts for encoding flow at the microscale using capillary phenomena, implementing highly miniaturized assays, monitoring flow, and making programmable capillary circuits. I will also describe “self-coalescence modules” and how these microfluidic elements can be used to implement fast biochemical reactions involving nanoliter volumes and parallel reactions in just a few square millimeters.

Bio

Dr. Delamarche is currently a Senior Manager at Spiden AG, a Swiss company developing medical technologies for the continuous monitoring of biomarkers. Prior to this, Dr. Delamarche established and led an internationally-recognized research group named “Precision Diagnostics"" at IBM Research – Zurich, where his main projects dealt with the development of portable and precise diagnostic devices and a non-contact scanning microfluidic probe for analyzing biological interfaces.
He is also a Lecturer at ETH Zurich and a contributor to scientific panels for governmental agencies and large research institutions. He published over 200 papers and proceedings, and is co-inventor on more than 70 patent families. He has received over 30 awards from IBM, was named “Master Inventor” by IBM, and received the Werner prize of the Swiss Chemical Society in 2006 and Langmuir Lecture Award in 2020 from the American Chemical Society.
Dr. Delamarche studied chemistry and received a degree in supramolecular chemistry in 1992 from the University Paul Sabatier of Toulouse in France and his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1995 from the University of Zurich.