Presenter: Albert Yim – Neuroscience
Faculty Mentor(s): Jonathan Reeder
Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation
Continuous, real-time sweat analysis is an underdeveloped field with promising applications ranging from aiding clinical health care to tracking athletic performance. Noninvasive, biochemical metrics indicative of physical exertion, hydration, and injury risk are highly sought-after. Currently, microfluidic devices allow for noninvasive collection and storage of sweat through precisely engineered microchannels but lack a method to record continuous sweat rates. Sweat rate and biomarker composition are highly variant between individuals, requiring a personalized hydration feedback approach. The biomarker variance is significantly attributed to sweat rate, making rate normalized biomarker concentrations from recorded continuous sweat rates indicative of performance metrics. Photolithography was used to create molds with designed microchannels. SIS was used to create a soft, flexible device to collect, store, and analyze sweat. UVO treatment increased efficiency of device bonding and fabrication. Colorimetric reagents were used as the basis for a gradient system to characterize a continuous sweat rate. This was analyzed using video documentation and a pressure-driven flow pump at set flow rates to emulate sweating. Data obtained was suggestive this system was able to measure a continuous sweat rate but was not conclusive. Further research as the sources of inconsistency in results would be required before this would become a feasible method to measure biomarker changes.