Blinking Eye-on-a-Chip is One of NSF’s ‘4 Awesome Discoveries’

Blinking Eye-on-a-Chip is One of NSF’s ‘4 Awesome Discoveries’

Each week, the National Science Foundation highlights “4 Awesome Discoveries You Probably Didn’t Hear About” — a kid-friendly YouTube series that highlights particularly eye-popping NSF-supported research.

This week, one of those stories was literally about an eye, or rather, a synthetic model of one.

Dan Huh, associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and graduate student Jeongyun Seo, recently published a paper that outlined their new blinking eye-on-a-chip. Containing human cells and mechanical parts designed to mimic natural biological functions, including a motorized eyelid, the device was developed as platform for modeling dry eye disease and testing drugs to treat it.

See more of the series at the NSF’s Science360 site, and read more about Huh’s blinking-eye-on-a-chip research here.