New Lab Opens At NJIT

NEWARK, May 8- New Jersey Institute of Technology announces the opening of a biotechnology lab whose world-class technology can help identify and kill deadly bacteria, viruses and cancer cells.

The Keck Lab, which opens Thursday, May 10 at 10 a.m., will use a technique, known as Micro-Flow Control, which allows researchers to identify and combat particles such as bacteria by creating small disturbances in the flow of liquids.

The lab is distinguished not only by its technology but also by its director: Nadine Aubry, Ph.D., the only woman in the state to chair a mechanical engineering department.
“We can use electrodes to separate dangerous micro-organisms, such as bacteria, from the blood,” Aubry says, “and then filter it out, or kill them.” Aubry holds an endowed chair, the Jacobus Chair in mechanical engineering, at NJIT.

The Keck Lab will also use micro-chip technology - laboratories on chips - to eliminate contaminants from oils and lubricants used on naval ships. United States naval ships now use mechanical filters to clean diesel fuel. But the filters, just like those on a car, cannot filter out minute particles. The filters quickly become dirtied by metallic wear and need to be replaced.
Scientists at the Keck Lab are developing a way to replace filters with electrodes that separate and remove the contaminants in the fuel. Instruments in the lab use electrical fields to separate nano- and micro-scale sized particles suspended in liquids, such as diesel fuel or blood. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. A human hair, for example, is about 70,000 nanometers.
New Jersey Institute of Technology received a $500,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, of Los Angeles to establish the lab; the state later added a grant of $2.7 million to create “the New Jersey Center for Micro-Flow Control.”

Cleaning fluids with electrical fields and combating bacteria are just two of the projects that the lab can perform. As Keck lab researchers noted in their proposals: “We have not even imagined some of the science, engineering and medical research and development the lab is going to make possible.”

The Keck Lab is located in Room 303 of the Otto H. York Center for Environmental Engineering and Science at the NJIT campus, at 138 Warren Street. Reporters and photographers who would like to attend the grand opening should arrive at 10 a.m. NJIT President Saul Fenster will speak at 10:30 a.m., and Aubry will give an overview of the lab at 11:15 a.m. A tour of the Keck lab will be offered at 11:30 a.m.

NJIT is a public research university enrolling over 8,200 bachelor's, master's and doctoral students in 80 degree programs through its five colleges: Newark College of Engineering, New Jersey School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, the School of Management and the Albert Dorman Honors College. Research initiatives include manufacturing, microelectronics, multimedia, transportation, computer science, solar astrophysics, environmental engineering and science, and architecture and building science. According to Yahoo! Internet Life magazine rankings, NJIT has been America's most wired public university for three consecutive years.