Hi! My name is Dev Sangha, and I’m a biology major at Florida State University, set to graduate in Spring 2027. I’m passionate about science, technology, and biomedical research. This summer, with support from the IDEA Grant, I’ll be working on a project that brings together engineering and biology to tackle a very real problem in research: the lack of affordable tools to measure tissue stiffness.
Tissue stiffness is an important physical property that tells researchers a lot about the health and function of organs. However, in most wet labs, especially smaller or budget-limited ones, scientists don’t have access to tools that can measure stiffness easily. The current gold standard for this type of measurement is the atomic force microscope (AFM), a high-tech device that uses a nanoscale probe to measure how stiff a tissue sample is. While accurate, these machines can cost anywhere from $20,000 to over $250,000, and even the small tips they use can cost over $1,700 for just 50, often breaking during use. For many labs, this just isn’t an option.
To solve this, my project is focused on designing a macroscopic tissue stiffness analyzer, a device that can do a similar job for a fraction of the cost. The idea is to build a tool that’s reliable, much more affordable, and user-friendly, so more researchers can study tissue mechanics without breaking their budget. We believe that with a simpler design, we can still get accurate data that’s good enough for many biological studies.
This summer, I’ll be designing the device using a 3D modeling software called Fusion360. The tool will be built using a stepper motor and threaded rod that controls the movement of a 3D-printed tip. This tip will press into the tissue in very small steps (as small as 0.01 mm) to measure how soft or stiff it is. A strain gauge, a type of sensor, will detect how much force is being applied, and from that, we can calculate the tissue’s elastic modulus, which tells us how much it resists being compressed.
Once the device is built, we’ll test it on different mouse organs, including the heart, brain, lungs, skin, and skeletal muscle. Our goal is to show that our device can distinguish between the different levels of stiffness in each organ. If we can do that successfully, we’ll have shown that this simpler device is a reliable alternative to high-cost machines like AFMs.
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