A sample of what is coming can be found in the (highly popular!) galleries below, containing over 1,400 pictures and movies of microfluidic devices, cellular micropatterns, microstructures, and cells in general (most unpublished, often unpublishable to be honest, but all free for you to download and enjoy -- keep visiting, we add new pictures almost every week!):

 

New! View the FolchLab YouTube Channel:

... and the Folch Lab art exhibit at Harborview Hospital in Seattle! (yes it's for sale and it's selling well!) :-) (We use all the proceeds to produce more art.) Click the image below to see the actual framed pictures.

The nervous system is formed of vastly complex networks of cells. The connectivity changes in time by the second (during development and during learning) and depends on microscale cellular and molecular scaffolds and gradients. Clearly, these spatiotemporal variations cannot be accurately addressed with traditional cell culture methods based on seeding cells over a homogeneous substrate and bathing them with a homogeneous solution. Are you homogeneous?

We design and use microfluidic devices and micropatterned substrates to better mimic the real microenvironment of nerve cells when we culture them outside of the organism. We are microfluidic!

Examples of questions that interest us (and where we have successfully shown the potential of the technology already) are how neurons find their targets during development (axon guidance), how they establish their connections (synaptogenesis), and how we sense odors (olfaction), among other projects.
For more details on our research projects, ENTER here >>
In addition to our own work, we plan to bring art students into the lab to build microdevices and generate visually-arresting micrographs, which will be shown in exhibits and books.

Click BAIT image below to visit the exhibit at Harborview Medical Center (Feb 27 - April 3). UW News story.

In particular, as educators we are attracted by the mental exercise that our images trigger in inquisitive minds ("What is this?"). We will seize that moment and we will use art as a bait to introduce scientific concepts to minds in such receptive states.
NEW! We are also interested in the educational experience of blurring the lines between science and art.
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