Design, Building, and Validation of a Low-Cost Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction Instrument for Copying and Quantifying DNA

Applied Biosystems Global, 2007-08

Liaison(s): Adrian Fawcett, Ken Livak ’74, Mark Oldham
Advisor(s): Shenda Baker
Students(s): Jeffrey Rubinstein (HMC), Cedric Tan Kai Wei (NUS), Jonathan Chen (HMC), Alexandria Kealey (HMC), Elizabeth Flannery (HMC), Chang Ci’en Sharon (NUS), Sui Xiaodi (NUS)

Our Global Clinic project was a collaboration between students at Harvey Mudd College and the National University of Singapore. The project was to design build and validate, a low-cost scientific instrument for making copies of DNA and quantifying the amount of DNA during the copying process. Specifically, the project focuses on the development of the thermalcycler and the optical detection subsystems for this instrument whose intended users are students in US secondary schools.