Lab-in-a backpack benefits from student’s microscope design

Bioengineering student Andy Miller has designed a compact but powerful microscope to fit in Rice’s innovative “lab-in-a-backpack.”

The microscope will augment other equipment in the backpack, which in effect is a mini-medical lab used by healthcare providers in treating residents of remote villages who rarely get to see a doctor.

Miller, who graduated in May, said the microscope—at about a pound in weight—was devised in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen this year would replace a standard instrument at least four times as heavy and much more fragile. The new scope is built into its own protective case, eliminating bulky and expensive packing material the original microscope required.

Miller’s ingenuity was recognized when he won the Best Engineering Design award this year, and was second overall in the annual Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium.

With the support of Maria Oden, director of the design kitchen and professor in the practice of engineering education, Miller refined his plastic microscope, which incorporates lenses and mirrors and matches the performance of stock instruments. His target price to make each microscope is $180—the price of the instrument currently used in the backpack. He hopes a final version will cost less than that to produce.

It is hoped that Miller’s device will be tested in remote villages this summer, Oden said.

Mike Williams, Rice News