Video of the week: Programmable Droplets

Programmable Droplets was created by Media Lab researcher Udayan Umapathi. Biologists spend huge amounts of their time in the lab laboriously moving fluids around using pipettes with disposable tips, generating waste and swallowing up time that could be better spent on other tasks. Programmable droplets are a lab-on-a-chip model that allows the user to use an electric field to move, mix and stir droplets. This can help eliminate contamination and human error and also drastically reduce the amount of waste generated in biological labs from disposable pipette tips.