Eriola-Sophia Shanko

Eriola- Sophia got her BSc from the University of Applied Sciences of Piraeus, Greece, in the field of Automation and Robotics engineering. She, next, joined a joint International Master on Smart Systems Integration (MEMS) at various universities: Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), Vestfold & Buskerud University College (Norway), Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), and she conducted research at the ETHZ ( Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (Switzerland)), Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel, Switzerland, for her MSc thesis.  The thesis involved the design, microfabrication and characterization of a microfluidic chip for rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing of E. coli, titled as: "Steps towards antibiotic susceptibility testing microfluidic chips”.  This unique opportunity arose because she was awarded the Erasmus Mundus scholarship (4% acceptance rate).

In the microsystems group she will do research in the project "Magnetic control of micro-particles and integrated micro-actuators for high precision handheld diagnostics”, which is done in collaboration with Philips. The project involves the magnetic actuation of beads to achieve homogenuous mixing in-chip.

Engineering is the art of directing natural laws for the use and convenience of human kind.