About us

BEL and its Roots

The Bio Engineering Laboratory (BEL) was established 2008 at the Department of Biosystems, Science and Engineering in Basel. BEL emerged from the Physical Electronics Laboratory (PEL) that has been domiciled in the Department of Physics of ETH Zürich and has been dissolved in 2008.

BEL is rooted in Engineering and Physics and is performing interdisciplinary research and education relevant to Biology and Systems Biology. Our group has longstanding experience in the fields of chemical and biosensor microsystems and bioelectronics. Moreover, fluidic techniques for cell handling, analysis and manipulation have been developed.

Research Rationale

Bringing together Microtechnology and specifically Microelectronics, one of the currently most powerful technologies, with Biology offers very attractive prospects and unprecedented advantages:

• Transducer miniaturization is possible without a loss in signal quality, since the signals can be conditioned right at the site of their generation by means of integrated electronics (amplifiers, filters, etc.).
• Multitudes of microtransducers (e.g., 10'000 microelectrodes on a 2 mm by 2 mm chip) can be connected in parallel to a recording system, since the connectivity problem is overcome by means of integrated addressing schemes.
• Complex microsystems can be rendered useable for nonexperts by hiding their inherent complexity behind user-friendly software.
• Combination with microfluidics allows for systematically modifying a broad variety of parameters. Within a single system or cell colony chemicals can be added or removed, dosing sequences can be executed, and multiple dosings can be performed.