Biography

Yara Álvarez is originally from Asturias. She studied Biotechnology at Oviedo University. She finished her Master Degree in Forensic Analysis at UPV/EHU. Now she is PhD candidate at the Microfluidic Cluster UPV/EHU.

Project

Her research focuses on the development of a highly versatile configuration for the design of autonomous microfluidic devices: the integration of polymer micropumps with multilayer laminated microfluidic cartridges. Both PDMS and 3D-printing resin micropumps allow a large range of volume samples (from nanoliters to millilitres) to be processed in order to perform fluidic operations, such as sequential addition.

Additionally, a number of fabrication methodologies are available for the generation of polymeric microfluidic cartridges, as the architecture of the devices should be cost-effective for large-scale manufacturing. She works in the development of cartridges through manufacturing techniques as 3D-printing, multilayer lamination of grafted plastic substrates, moulding, thermocompresion, etc. while implementing these configurations in the development of a self-powered cartridge for the separation of plasma from whole blood.