Time： 15:00-17:00 p.m., Sept. 7, 2012 (Friday)
Place：Room 446, ICT. CAS
Speaker:  Prof. Tsung-Yi Ho
National Cheng Kung University, Tainan

Abstract
Advances in droplet-based digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) have led to the emergence of biochips for automating laboratory procedures in biochemistry and molecular biology. These devices enable the precise control of microliter of nanoliter volumes of biochemical samples and reagents. They combine electronics with biology, and integrate various bioassay operations,such as sample preparation, analysis, separation, and detection. To meet the challenges of increasing design complexity, computer-aided-design (CAD) tools have been involved to build DMFBs efficiently. This talk presents an overview of DMFBs and describes emerging CAD tools for the automated synthesis and optimization of DMFB designs, from fluidic-level synthesis to chip-level design. Design automations are expected to relieve the design burden of manual optimization of bioassays, time-consuming chip designs, and costly testing and maintenance procedures. With the assistance of CAD tools, users can concentrate on the development and abstraction of nanoscale bioassays while leaving chip optimization and implementation details to CAD tools.

Bio:
Tsung-Yi Ho received his Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, in 2005. Since 2007, he has been with the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC, where he is currently an Associate Professor. From 2003 to 2004, 2005, 2008, and 2012, he was a visiting scholar at University of California, Santa Barbara in USA, Waseda University in Japan, Synopsys in USA, Technical University of Munich in Germany, respectively. Prof. Ho's research interests include design automation for digital microfluidic biochips and nanometer integrated circuits. He has published several papers in top journals and conferences such as IEEE Transactions on CAD, ACM TODAES, ACM/IEEE DAC, IEEE/ACM ICCAD, ACM ISPD, and etc.
Because of his outstanding academic performance, Prof. Ho has been invited as a tutorial speaker in IEEE ISCAS, IEEE/ACM ICCAD, and IEEE/ACM ESWeek in recent years. Moreover, he is a recipient of the Invitational Fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan and the Humboldt Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,Germany.