Karina Torres-Castro

I am an associate researcher (Intl. Assoc.) in the BioMEMS Lab from the Biophysical and Biomedical Measurements Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST. I obtained my Ph.D. at the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Virginia. I work developing microfluidic systems for measuring different biophysical and/or condensed matter properties. I received my B.Sc. (Lic.) in Chemical Engineering at the Universidad de Costa Rica and a M.Sc. in Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) at the Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Previously I spent 8 years working as an engineer in the private and public sector. Email contact: karina.torrescastro@nist.gov

             


Research
Dielectrophoretic enrichment of live chemo-resistant circulating-like pancreatic cancer cells from media of drug-treated adherent cultures of solid tumors.
Aditya Rane, Javad Jarmoshti, Abdullah Bin-Siddique, Sara Adair, Karina Torres-Castro, Carlos Honrado, Todd W. Bauer, Nathan S. Swami. Lab on a Chip.
Microfluidic Blood Separation: Key Technologies and Critical Figures of Merit.
Karina Torres-Castro, Katherine Acuna-Umana, Leonardo Lesser-Rojas, Darwin R. Reyes. Micromachines. Review
Multichannel Impedance Cytometry Downstream of Cell Separation by Deterministic Lateral Displacement to Quantify Macrophage Enrichment in Heterogeneous Samples.
Karina Torres-Castro, Javad Jarmoshti, Li Xiao, Aditya Rane, Armita Salahi, Li Jin, Xudong Li, Federica Caselli & Carlos Honrado, Nathan S. Swami. Advanced Materials Technologies. -Selected as inside cover-
Biophysical quantification of reorganization dynamics of human pancreatic islets during co-culture with adipose-derived stem cells.
Karina Torres-Castro, Mohammad S. Azimi, Walter B. Varhue, Carlos Honrado, Shayn M. Peirce & Nathan S. Swami. Analyst
On-chip microfluidic buffer swap of biological samples in-line with downstream dielectrophoresis.
XuHai Huang*, Karina Torres-Castro*, Walter Varhue, Aditya Rane, Ahmed Rasin & Nathan S. Swami. ELECTROPHORESIS

*: Equal Contributors    --Best Paper Award! (June 2022)
Thermal Analysis of Microfluidic cooling in Processing-in-3D-Stacked Memory.
Jun-Han Han, Karina Torres-Castro, Robert E. West, Nathan S. Swami & Mircea Stan. 2021 22nd International Conference on Thermal, Mechanical and Multi-Physics Simulation and Experiments in Microelectronics and Microsystems EuroSimE
Power and Thermal Modeling of In-3D-Memory Computing.
Jun-Han Han, Robert E. West, Karina Torres-Castro, Nathan S. Swami, Samira Khan & Mircea Stan. 2021 International Symposium on Devices, Circuits and Systems ISDCS
Self-aligned sequential lateral field non-uniformities over channel depth for high throughput dielectrophoretic cell deflection.
XuHai Huang, Karina Torres-Castro, Walter B. Varhue, Armita Salahi, Ahmed Rasin, Carlos Honrado, Audrey Brown, Jennifer Guler & Nathan S. Swami. Lab on a Chip Lab on a Chip HOT Articles 2021 -Selected as inside front cover-
Microfluidic Cooling for 3D-IC with 3D Printing Package.
Jun-Han Han, Karina Torres-Castro, Robert E. West, Walter B. Varhue, Nathan S. Swami & Mircea Stan. IEEE SOI-3D-Subthreshold Microelectronics Technology Unified Conference S3S
High-throughput dynamical analysis of dielectrophoretic frequency dispersion of single cells based on deflected flow streamlines.
Karina Torres-Castro, Carlos Honrado, Walter B. Varhue, Vahid Farmehini & Nathan S. Swami. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry -Selected as forefront cover-
Combined electrokinetic manipulations of pathogenic bacterial samples in low-cost fabricated dielectrophoretic devices.
Alejandro Martinez-Brenes, Karina Torres-Castro, Richard Marin-Benavides, Katherine Acuña-Umaña, Christopher Espinoza-Araya, Raquel Ramírez-Carranza, Gabriela González-Espinoza, Norman Rojas-Campos, Caterina Guzmán-Verri, Giovanni Sáenz-Arce & Leonardo Lesser-Rojas. AIP Advances
Conferences
MicroTAS (uTAS), Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences 2024: Harmonizing Health Metrics: Mircrofluidic Surface Acoustic Wave Technology for Measuring Plasma Viscosity (Poster)
ONRG/AFOSR-Costa Rica-Taiwan: Invited speaker at the 1st Advanced Materials Workshop "From Bioinspiration to Technological Innovation"
AES Electrophoresis Society meeting at SciX 2023: Invited speaker in the AES Early career session: On-chip multichannel impedance cytometry for phenotypic monitoring of microfluidic separations
MicroTAS (uTAS), Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences 2023: Crossover Cell Migration Measurements (CCM): Comprehensive optical and electrical cell tracking (Poster)
Gordon Research Conference (GRC) 2023, Microscale Systems: From Physical Phenomena to Biological Applications: Leveraging multiple surface acoustic waves (SAW) interrogation points for precise flow measurements (Poster)
Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) 2023, Leveraging Microscale Fluidic Phenomena for Novel Analyte Measurements: Leveraging multiple surface acoustic waves (SAW) interrogation points for precise flow measurements (Oral presentation)
Dielectrophoresis 2021: Sidewall electrodes in a microchannel for high-throughput dielectrophoretic separations (Poster)
MicroTAS (uTAS), Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences 2020: Biomechanical Markers for Monitoring Heterogeneity in Islet Reorganization Dynamics with Adipose Stem Cells (Poster)
AES Electrophoresis Society 2018: Microfluidic Dielectrophoresis Cytometry for Single-Cell Analysis to Quantify Phenotypic Heterogeneity (Poster)
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Meeting 2017: Aptamer-Based Nanoslit Platforms for Characterizing Human Performance Biomarkers (Oral Presentation)
Dielectrophoresis 2016: Low-cost Fabrication of Dielectrophoretic Devices for Electrokinetic Characterization of Tropical Infectious Bacterial Samples (Poster)
Peer-review academic service
Analytica Chimica Acta (Elsevier).
ELECTROPHORESIS (Wiley).
Micromachines (MDPI).
Biosensors (MDPI).
Sensors (MDPI).
Awards
Best student paper award -ELECTROPHORESIS- Wiley-VCH (2022).
1st place UVA's ECE department Poster competition (2021).
Sture G. Olsson Fellowship in Engineering (2020).
iRedefine Grant Award - NSF Career Development Workshop (2020).
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award (2018).
Patent
On-chip Microfluidic Buffer Swap for Biological Samples in-line with Downstream Dielectrophoresis and Related Method Thereof (U.S. Patent App. No. 63/303,717).
Nathan Swami, XuHai Huang, Karina Torres-Castro & Walter Varhue
Teaching
TA: Microfabrication Laboratory 2017-2018.
TA: Fundamentals of Electronics I - Fall 2016.


Work Experience
IguanaSolar
Solar Energy Consultant/Startup.
Mar 2013 - Jun 2016.
CELEQ-UCR.
R&D Engineer .
Mar 2011 - Feb 2015.
Firestone Industrial Products.
Process Engineer.
Jun 2009 - Feb 2011.
Ad Astra Rocket Company.
Intern.
Jan 2009 - May 2009.
Other Publications
Ticotal: talento destacado del mes de diciembre, 2019.
Research improves diabetic´s chances of becoming insulin independent.
Manual para la implementación de energías renovables en la agroindustria.