study on an unprecedented level. In 2018 researchers at Oregon Health & Science University discovered the existence of “hybrid” cancer cells—cells that are a blend of tumor and blood cells, used by tumors to infiltrate, grow and adapt to a patient’s immune system — while observing ultrasounds taken from a microfluidics device co-designed by Montoya Mira. These cells, though likely used by tumors since the dawn of time, have gone undetected by humans until now. In industry, microfluidics gives machines something they’ve always needed: cooling. The more microchips that run on top of one another in large computing devices — such as supercomputers used in data centers — the hotter they get and the greater the risk of melting becomes. Injecting liquid onto the chips allows for more to be stacked on top of one another without overheating. Microfluidics also helps in the discovery and manufacturing of specialty and industrial chemicals, many of which can be manipulated more easily at the cellular level. OHSU is one of 40 institutes, companies and municipalities taking part in the Corvallis Microfluidics Tech Hub, an industry coalition led by Oregon State University’s College of Engineering professor Tom Weller. In October the group was designated as a national Tech Hub by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. The Tech Hubs Program was enacted as part of the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022. The goal of the tech hubs is to drive job creation and increase American competitiveness, all while bringing laboratory technologies like microfluidics to commercial scale. After a four-month application process, which ends Feb. 29, between five and eight of the 32 nationally recognized tech hubs will receive awards between $40 million and $70 million to grow and scale their respective industries. The microfluidics collation was one of two Oregon institutions to receive the designation, along with the Pacific Northwest Mass Timber Tech Hub, which is also led by an OSU team. Even though the odds of getting chosen from the federal investment are statistically low, the program is authorized to distribute $10 billion to tech hubs over the next five years, meaning this won’t be the only opportunity. But Weller says Corvallis Microfluidics Tech Hub (or “CorMic” Tech Hub, as he and some other members call it) has reason to stand out from the competition. A 2022 industry forecast by Straits Research estimated the global microfluidics market would grow from $20.98 billion in 2022 to $117.13 billion by 2031, and from $5.28 billion in 2022 to $21.45 billion by 2032 in the United States, driven by the technology’s relevance in biological and chemical research, rising interest among manufacturers and the administration’s goals of manufacturing independence from China. “The application of microfluidics and thermal management for the semiconductor industry is a really recent thing, which has been amplified by data centers; graphics-processing units NVIDIA, Intel and other companies are producing; and just the overall demands on computational resources. I think I heard the other day that data centers are 2% of energy consumption in the country. That certainly wasn’t the case 10 years ago,” Weller says. “And in the specialty chemical manufacturing area, a lot of that has been offshored. Most of the production is happening in Asia and other parts of the world, and that’s right at the beginning of the supply chain for the semiconductor industry. Just in the last two years, the government has realized that puts us in a very vulnerable position when we rely so heavily on materials coming in from outside of the country. Part of what the tech hub can do is enable very efficient and rapid discovery of new specialty chemicals, and that would allow us to restore a lot of that chemical- manufacturing capability to the U.S. as well.” Weller adds that the environmental component of microfluidics also makes it a good candidate for federal investment. “When you have a processor that’s getting very hot, and you marry that with microfluidics technology, it can pull the heat off very effectively. It reduces the amount of energy that you use, so there are pretty significant energy savings, like 30% to 40% energy savings for data centers,” Weller says. The goal of the CorMic hub is to create an environment where microfluidics startups and existing companies Research engineer Jose Luis Montoya Mira shows the surface of a new device under a powerful microscope at OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute. This is a device used at OHSU to isolate cells from a blood sample that are indicative of cancer. 19
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