Among the exact and natural sciences, modern chemistry occupies a central place. This is due to its unique participation in interpreting changes and processes and phenomena occurring in the surrounding ecosystem and/or biological (natural) systems. Modern chemistry is also the base and link between environment and ecology (green chemistry), natural and exact disciplines (geochemistry and geology, medicine and pharmacy, phytochemistry, physics and astrophysics, biology and microbiology, physiology and biochemistry, chemistry of natural products and life, chemometrics and agriculture, chemistry of food products and diabetes, toxicology or materials and process engineering), but also between economics and law. In addition to basic research, chemistry includes the development of processes for obtaining individual products and constructing tools and devices in which these processes are carried out. The link of these projects is trace chemical analysis relating to the qualitative and quantitative determination of analytes present in complex and complex mixtures-matrices. This shows that analytical chemistry occupies a central place among the natural sciences, its interdisciplinary nature, and above all, universalism in interpreting changes and phenomena occurring at the molecular and cellular levels. An important branch of modern analytical chemistry is its miniaturization, robotization, and automation. Reducing the scale and form of the analytical process leads, among others, to improved selectivity, increased resolution, and efficiency while reducing unit costs.

Over the last 30 years, computing has gone through revolutionary change. Large, expensive computers, that were only installed at top scientific institutions and filled huge airconditioned rooms were initially shrunk to the double refrigerator size, and then to the suitcase size, laptop size, and finally to smartphone size. A similar revolution followed in the space program where behemoth spacecraft, that could be only afforded by the richest countries of the world, also shrunk to the size of a 10 cm on-side cube that can be launched by a university. In the beginning, these small spacecraft have only been launched to the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) and mainly conducted visible Earth imaging of various quality. We called this development the New Space.

Recently, New Space has moved from LEO to deep space. NASA has already sent the first miniature satellites to explore our solar system. The first interplanetary small satellites were launched to Mars with the NASA InSight mission. They were followed by a tiny Mars helicopter called Ingenuity and later a couple of small missions to the Moon. ESA had great success with a tiny spacecraft called LiciaCube that imaged the impact of the DART spacecraft into an asteroid. Now, NASA is considering a flotilla of small missions to study asteroids, comets, and Mars atmosphere or serve as companion spacecraft on flagship missions. The success of these small spacecraft, and if they will be able to supplant their huge brethren, will depend on the size, mass, and reliability of microsystems. Small spacecraft manufacturers are working on shrinking spacecraft subsystems by introducing microdevices and systems on a chip. There are several science microinstruments under development by NASA and other organizations. Microsystems, microdevices, and microinstruments will revolutionize future space exploration by enabling small helicopters, drones, ice-penetrating robots, small submarines, aerobots, and rovers to answer the most profound questions about our solar systems.

This keynote speech will describe the state of the art in microdevices used for space exploration, the current needs for microsystems, and the future miniaturization trends that will shape deep space exploration.

Microfluidic devices offer the possibility for in-the-field and point-of-care analysis provided the devices are portable, require only minimal external instrumentation and little power and are robust. In our group, we are investigating simple to operate workflows for point-of-care pathogen analysis from clinical samples in collaboration with researchers in Kenya. Furthermore, we study approaches to chemical sensing in the environment with Citizen Scientists to gather data on the level and dynamics of nutrients or pollutants within freshwater and soil samples.

More than 75% of women with newly diagnosed breast cancer are over the age of 50. Women who carry germline mutations have a lifetime risk as high 80% for developing breast cancer. Microfluidic applications in breast cancer have focused on diagnosis and therapeutic screening, and more recently, on recapitulating tumor microenvironments to study breast cancer biology. In this talk, I will describe how my lab has taken a different path: using microfluidics to assess a woman's susceptibility for developing breast cancer.

Microfluidic devices have great potential for medical and life science applications. Recent advances in microfluidic devices have enable the precise analysis of small amounts of specific chemicals (e.g., protein, peptide, DNA, RNA, drug, etc.) in body fluids. In addition to analysis of trace biological samples and high-throughput screening, microfluidic devices have recently attracted attention in the field of drug delivery systems, with particular interest in the production of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). Microfluidic devices provide many advantages for drug-loaded LNP production, including precise LNP size controllability, high reproducibility, high-throughput optimization of LNP formulation, and continuous LNP-production processes. Various microfluidic devices have been developed and used to produce LNPs encapsulating RNA, DNA, ribonucleoproteins (RNPs), drugs, and others. In fact, microfluidic devices are also being used in the development of Onpattro®, which was approved by the FDA in 2018 as an RNA interference therapeutic drug. Recently, we developed a microfluidic device named iLiNP® (invasive lipid nanoparticle production) device for LNP production based on computational fluid dynamics and LNP formation mechanism. It enabled the LNP size tuning at 10 nm intervals in the size range from 20 to 100 nm. Using this device, we have not only developed pharmaceutical applications by producing LNPs encapsulating nucleic acids and drugs, but also devices integrating the post-processing of LNP production and devices for mass production. Moreover, very recently, we have found that iLiNP devices are also highly suitable for the fabrication of functional lipid nanoparticles such as artificial exosomes and virus-like particles. In this lecture I will present these results.

Universal microfluidic platforms are valuable tools for studying biological systems and pushing forward the frontiers of life science research. They offer versatility, standardization, cost-effectiveness, and enable accelerated research. This talk will showcase Microfluidics Cluster UPV/EHU's Lab on a chip technology focused on standardization, which combines material science, microfluidic components, surface engineering, chemistry, and biology to explore Cell-Cell Interactions, Drug Screening, Organs-on-Chip, Disease Modeling, and Point-of-Care Diagnostics.

The internalization of biomolecules in cells, such as DNAs, RNAs, and proteins, is vital for diverse studies from basic biology to clinical applications. Traditional tools, including viral vectors, cationic lipids, and electroporators, have limitations in achieving high delivery efficiency while preserving cell viability, phenotype, and function. In this talk, I will discuss our recent microfluidic intracellular delivery platform developments and their applications in genome editing and cancer immunotherapy.

The dream of conducting chemical tests on microfabricated platforms has challenged traditional manufacturing approaches as functional integration often relies on the integration of multiple materials in a single device. 3D printing provides an alternative manufacturing approach for prototyping and small-scale production of fluidic devices. Focusing on the integration of porous materials, Print Pause Print and In Print approaches were developed for 3D printing functionally integrated devices for (bio)chemical analysis and behavioural studies of aquatic organisms.

Capillaric circuits (CCs) are self-powered microfluidic systems that structurally-encode liquid handling algorithms with up to hundreds of step-by-step capillary flow operations - peripherals and computer are not needed. CCs will be discussed, and the manufacturing of ready-to-use CCs by low-cost photopolymerization 3D printers using new inks and designs introduced, thus opening the door to distributed digital manufacturing of fully functional microfluidics; by anyone, anywhere.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a complex and dynamic network of proteins and other molecules that surrounds cells, providing mechanical and biochemical cues that regulate cell behavior and tissue function. As such, the ECM is essential not only for normal tissue morphogenesis but also for pathological changes, such as those seen in cancer. Therefore, it is important to recapitulate the physiological and pathological features of the ECM to engineer disease models in vitro that accurately mimic the behavior of cells in vivo. By using versatile ECM engineering methods, we re-create physiologically relevant three-dimensional tissue microenvironments that allow for the engagement of the native ECM and alteration of multi-level biological behaviors, from epigenetic information to tissue architecture, providing a better understanding of disease mechanisms and potential

Wearables can facilitate continuous and unobtrusive healthcare monitoring. However, conventional sensors are inflexible and cumbersome. We develop flexible and stretchable biomedical sensors with tunable sensitivity and robustness. Our breakthroughs in liquid-based microfluidic sensors have resulted in a broad range of healthcare applications. These applications include rehabilitation, physiological sensing, disease monitoring, and virtual reality medical training in the health metaverse. The development of liquid-based microfluidic sensing technology is a significant advancement in healthcare and offers great potential for future innovations in this field.

Despite rapid advances towards home-based testing during COVID-19, 90% of current point-of-care diagnostic health tests still reside within hospital settings.

From HIV and influenza to COVID-19, each new infectious disease outbreak has highlighted the need for massively-scalable testing that can be performed at the point-of-care (POC), in order to prevent, track, and monitor pandemic threats. These distributed sample-to-answer tests will require highly accurate, portable sensors with near foolproof operation and interpretation. Critically, test developers require an understanding of the stakeholders and end-users of their technologies and the barriers to adoption and use.

Nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) are a molecular technique to detect the genetic material of pathogens and are considered among the most sensitive detection methods available. While NAATs can be developed and scaled within weeks, they are almost exclusively relegated to high resource settings with benchtop equipment and trained users. Combining NAATs with paper-based detection platforms is promising method to bring these tests to the POC due to the manufacturability, scalability, and simplicity of each of the components. I will present our progress in paper-based POC NAAT development as well as efforts to reduce the barriers to their production and implementation in order to enable rapid diagnosis anywhere in the world.

Microfluidic devices based on inertial microfluidics have attracted considerable attention for applications in blood fractionation and liquid biopsy due to label-free nature. However, they can be complex, deliver limited throughput, and rely on sample dilution, making them challenging to deploy as routinely-used tools. We are developing platforms capable of label-free separation from unmodified whole blood to rapidly fractionate blood cells or screen rare cell populations, for downstream analysis or drug screening.s

Much of your health is regulated by a sophisticated communication network between your nervous system and immune system yet probing this communication pathway, especially across multiple organs simultaneously or during local assault, remains challenging with existing tools. This talk will highlight the recent work we have made at developing organ-on-chip platforms, which are designed to culture and co-culture organs ex vivo and be amenable to real-time electrochemical sensing and fluorescence imaging.

In this presentation, we discuss advancements in microfluidics and microsystems for: 1) minimally invasive cell biopsies via gastrointestinal endoscopy and endovascular catheters; 2) rapid detection of clinically relevant bacteria concentrations in urine and blood, via digital culture dipsticks and smart centrifugation with microtrapping, and; 3) programmable (robotic) matter, showcasing microfluidics-enabled contact-free shape transfiguration of solid objects.

There is still a significant increase in the number of cancer cases in the world. Researchers around the world are working on developing more and more effective drugs and methods of cancer treatment. However, there is still a lack of reliable in vitro and in vivo research models that would support the process of evaluating the effectiveness of these newly developed anticancer drugs/therapies. We are developing Cell-on-Chip and Organ-on-Chip tools which can support cancer research.