Prof. Rohit N Karnik

Professor Karnik's general interest is in microfluidic and nanofluidic devices for a variety of applications ranging from nanoparticle synthesis and separation technology to manipulation of single molecules. Postdoctoral research conducted in Professor Robert Langer's group involved using microfluidic devices for combinatorial synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles for drug delivery applications. Another project involved development of a new continuous-flow technique for cell separation based on receptor patterning in microfluidic channels.

As a graduate student in Professor Arun Majumdar's Nanoengineering Lab at Berkeley, Karnik worked in the areas of nanofluidics and microfluidic mixing.

Nanofluidics: Effects of surface charge can dominate ionic transport in nanofluidic channels when channel height becomes comparable to the Debye screening length. Nanofluidics research involved development of a nanofluidic transistor for flow control, studying the effects of biomolecular binding events in nanochannels on transport of ions, development of a new technique for solution-phase biomolecular patterning, and fabrication of a nanofluidic diode for rectification of transport.

Microfluidics: Microfluidics research involved development of a mixer to mix concentrated protein solutions to study biochemical kinetics on the millisecond timescale under conditions that mimic those inside cells. This research extended the mixing time from minutes in macroscale systems to milliseconds in our device.