BIOGRAPHY
Jacobo Paredes, PhD. was born in Pontevedra (Spain) in 1984. He received his MS in Mechanical Engineering from Tecnun, the School of Engineering at the University of Navarra, in 2007. In 2008 he obtained his MS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Navarra. He worked at CEIT, Spain, where he carried out his PhD degree in Biomedical Engineering. Jacobo was also a lecturer at the School of Engineering at the University of Navarra in 2011 and 2012. His interests are focused on the design and fabrication of biosensors and bioMEMS for healthcare applications, micro total analysis systems, lab-on-a-chip devices, implantable devices, new diagnostic or therapeutic strategies, tissue engineering, etc. He is co-author of two patents in the field of biomedical instrumentation and a number of scientific and technical papers. Currently he is conducting a two-year post-doc research at the Department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Dorian Liepmann.

Functional Plastic Microstructures Fabricated Using Electroplating and Hot Embossing [BPN729]
The overall goal of this research is the development of fabrication techniques for simple, cheap, and rapid creation of plastic or polymer based microfluidic devices. Currently microfluidic systems are made using PDMS because it is ideal for rapid laboratory research. However, PDMS is not an ideal material for commercialization because of its material and chemical properties especially for any applications that require hydrophilic compounds. Our long-term goals are to further explore the potential of hot-embossed microscale devices as platforms for complete BioMEMS devices. This includes the integration of flow diagnostic elements and silicon-based biosensors.