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 Craig R. Forest
Assistant Professor
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
Craig Forest wil return to campus as an Assistant Professor in fall 2008; from 1996 to 2001 he was an undergraduate student in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Enginering. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, he was employed as a research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School during 2007-2008. During 2005-2008, Dr. Forest founded and managed Claw Hanging Systems, LLC ( http://americaninventorclaw.com/) in partnership with Georgia Tech graduate David Moeller ( BSME 2001). Prior to that, he was employed by NASA's Johnson Space Center (1998-2001), and Sandia National Labororatories in Livermore, California (2001) and in Albuquerque, New Mexico (2003).
As an undergraduate at Georgia Tech, Dr. Forest discovered a passion for machine design and manufacturing doing research with Dr. William Singhose and Dr. Thomas Kurfess. This led to graduate work in x-ray telescope assembly and metrology for NASA, conducted at MIT during 2001-2003 under the guidance of Dr. Mark Schattenburg and Dr. Alex Slocum. Searching for a Ph.D. project in 2003, he became interested in applying his interests in precision machine design and micro-macro fabrication to an important biomedical challenge. In this search, he join ed the efforts of Dr. Bill Thilly and Dr. Ian Hunter at MIT. Dr. Thilly has long been interested in the genetic basis for common diseases, and the underlying nature of genetic mutations in humans. Together with Dr. Hunter's instrumentation expertise, they teamed up to build a machine capable of sorting through genetic mutations in 1,000,000 people simultaneously. Such an instrument could contribute to the discovery of the genetic causes for common diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, by allowing very rapid comparison of DNA from many people who have the disease to that from many who don't. The effort established Dr. Forest's interest in ultra-high throughput genomics instrumentation.
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.
Distinctions
Representative Publications
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C. R. Forest, M. A. Saez, and I. W. Hunter. 2007. Microforging Technique for Rapid, Low-Cost Fabrication of Lens Array Molds. Applications Optics 46, 6886-8673.
M. Akilian, et al. 2007. Thin Optic Constraint., Journal of International Soc. Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology 31(2), 130-198.
C. R. Forest, et al. 2006. Repeatable and Accurate Assembly of X-ray Foil Optics. Journal of International Soc. Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology 30(1), 63-70.
C. R. Forest, et al. 2004. Metrology of Thin Transparent Optics Using Shack-Hartmann Wavefront Sensing. Journal of Optical Engineering 43(3), 742-753.
Y. Sun, et al. 2003. Precision Microcomb Design and Fabrication for X-ray Optics Assembly. Journal of Vac. Science and Technology B. 21(6), 2970-2974.
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