Our professors juggle research, teaching, and presenting every year—but 2025 was a particularly productive one for Greg Nordin. The Electrical and Computer Engineering professor spent the year publishing new papers and traveling to conferences around the globe, from Atlanta to France, Belgium, Germany, and Australia.
At the conferences, he was able to present his work on Lab on a Chip, which involves shrinking instrumentation from a full-scale lab to a microscale to perform tests in a more affordable, portable, and timely manner. Traditionally, Lab on a Chip technologies are made in a clean room, but Nordin looked into creating them with 3D printers. Quickly, he found that the commercial printers were not up to the standard that they needed, as they were unable to print negative features at such a small scale. To combat this issue, his lab designed their own 3D printers and materials that could create high-resolution negative features to hold the liquid needed to perform the lab tests. Their 3D printers also create active elements such as tiny pumps and valves.
Dr. Nordin was able to collaborate with many familiar faces at these conferences, and he attended several with his colleague Adam Woolley from the Chemistry Department, who is also the Graduate Dean at BYU Engineering. “You meet a lot of different people and make a lot of connections and see what other people are doing and how that relates to your research. Often, that will give you new ideas, or you can see other people you can collaborate with,” Nordin says. At the International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences in Australia, Nordin was able to speak with a researcher he has collaborated with in the past, who studies organ function with Lab on a Chip. She was unable to print the negative features she needed in high enough resolution, so Nordin’s lab printed some chips for her team. Research partnerships like this one often grow out of such conferences, and Nordin looks forward to reconnecting with longtime collaborators and meeting new ones.
Another notable moment in Nordin’s year was his lab’s Tiny Temples project. One of the undergraduates spearheaded the project, and together the lab created 150 unique temples all on a 12-by-19-millimeter microchip–each with measurements of approximately 1 by 0.5 by 0.3 millimeters. The project garnered a lot of attention in the University, local, and Church News.
2026 is shaping up to be another busy year for Nordin and his lab, with large papers and continued research on the horizon. Nordin attributes much of the forward motion in his lab to his dedicated students. The projects of his lab largely hinge on the enthusiasm and motivation of the many PhD, Master's, and Undergraduate students who work on the 3D printing chip technology.
Nordin reflects, “All the students in my lab are at different levels and ranges of abilities and experience, but none of that really matters. What really matters is a student’s level of interest and enthusiasm. If that’s there, then we can work with it and really help them grow and develop, which is always such a pleasure.”
We look forward to seeing what Nordin’s Microfluidics Research Group accomplishes this year!