Profile

Education

• Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007
• M.S.M.E., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003
• B.S.M.E., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001

Background

 Dr. Craig Forest joined the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering as an Assistant Professor in August 2008.  The Precision Biosystems Laboratory is focused on the creation and application of miniaturized, high-throughput, biological instrumentation to advance genetic science.  The development of instruments that can nimbly load,manipulate, and measure many biological samples—not only simultaneously, but also more sensitively, more accurately, and more repeatably than under current approaches—opens the door to essential, comprehensive biological system studies.  This research leverages bioMEMS and its interplay with machine design, signal processing, optics, and manufacturing.

Motivated by basic scientific objectives in genetic sensing and control, the PBL aims to make fundamental engineering advancements towards developing biomolecular sensors and actuators in the thermal, optical, mechanical, and micro-manufacturing domains.  In turn, integration of these engineering elements into instruments enables corresponding advancements in fundamentally important scientific knowledge.  Genetic sensing objectives involve pathogen genome
identification, cell gene expression measurement, and understanding of the limits of inter-cell molecular signaling.  Genetic control objectives involve programming cells for biomanufacturing.  Related objectives involve in-vivo neuron-signaling sensors with genetic identification as well as scientific and clinical studies of platelet binding.  These instruments, and the discoveries they enable, are unlocking new frontiers in genetic science and the design and control of biological systems.

Research Areas and Descriptors

• Manufacturing and Bioengineering: Ultra-high throughput genomics instrumentation; detection, separation, amplification of DNA; 3-D microfabrication technologies for genomics applications; and micro-lenslet arrays

Research

Biotechnology research holds the promise of personalized medicine:  Medical treatments based on an individual's genetic makeup. However, the prerequisite exploration of the inner workings of biological systems is in its infancy.  The creation and application of instruments which can nimbly load, manipulate, and measure thousands to millions of biological samples simultaneously, more sensitively, more accurately, and more repeatably than current approaches would open the door to essential, comprehensive biological system studies. Our research group strives to develop and utilize such instruments for biomolecular analyses, with focus on genomics applications.  The research effort leverage interplay between machine design, signal processing, MEMS, optics, and novel manufacturing technologies for the design of precision biological instruments.

Photograph of a rectangular array of 10,000 lenses injection-molded from a milled and microforged mold in polymethyl methacrylate.  The central feature, a sprue, is an artifact of the injection molding process.  This lenlet array enables senstiive optical detection of 10,000 independent DNA samples simultneously. For details, see the paper by Forest et al.,Appl. Opt. 46,  6886-8673.

Current projects include:

• Genomic and proteomic imaging in thousands of samples for cancer tumor detection diagnostics;
• DNA mutation detection microchips for rapid, portable, individual screening;
• Optically triggered DNA amplification in thousands of samples for clinical diagnostics.

Our group strives to develop these tools, validate their performance with meaningful biological assays, and with our collaborators, pursue discoveries using the instruments.  These instruments, and the discoveries they enable, could open new frontiers for  the  design and control of biological systems. 

Students in our group learn to weave together the disciplines of precision machine design, signal processing, MEMS, optics, manufacturing, and molecular biology.  By designing, building, and testing, students get their hands dirty, creating instruments for genetic analysis. These skills will make them well suited to the biotech startup or manufacturing industry, as well offering the opportunity to publish and present results in journals and at international conferences.  Such publishing can be conducive to the pursuit of research careers such as in academia or national laboratories.