Lab on a Chip – past, present, and future

The new year (both Gregorian and lunar) has come and gone, and we can cast our gaze forward (at least in the northern hemisphere) to the first, hopeful days of Spring, 2021. This year brings an editorial turnover for Lab on a Chip, and it seems a good time to check in with past, present, and future Editors-in-Chief, including Andreas Manz (2001–2008), Abe Lee (2017–2020), and Aaron Wheeler (2021–), about the state of the field.

Andreas Manz: this journal clearly is my “home” and my “baby”! So many years after its beginnings, after thousands of publications and patent filings, hundreds of PhD theses, dozens of new professors doing research in the area, after changing beyond what I would have predicted in 2001, this journal has now “survived” a generation or two already. On its way, it helped scientific collaborations, advanced careers of students and academics alike, shaped the funding landscape and it is a great resource of information about this interdisciplinary field of “lab on a chip”. I am still very proud of it! My first editorial in the journal¹ referred to Richard Feynman's lecture on miniaturisation (which is a classic), it deals with a back-of-the-envelope calculation of potential throughput for molecular assays based on diffusion and chemical reaction (experimental verification still up for grabs), and it also mentions that a joke is a good way to introduce novel ideas. Another editorial² emphasizes that the origins of scientific treatment of nano-science/technology, microfluidics and chips technology can be found as early as in the 17th or 18th century, as documented by a textbook after Sir Isaac Newton's mathematical elements. My final editorial³ wonders about what and how we should pass on information to future generations. This sequence of editorials, going from concept, planning and predictions all the way to history and heritage, clearly shows the necessity to change the journal's editor-in-chief from time to time! All in all, the journal has proven to be a stable long-term archive of scientific information, including peer-review quality control, and is considered the gold standard for many young and established scientists and engineers. Content-wise, the move from molecular diffusion based microfluidic applications towards cell biology is hard to overlook. Organ-on-chip and human-body-on-chip are just a logic consequence. The advantages are less obvious, results are often given as a series of fluorescence photos, and physical quantifications have become less frequent. It looks like a move from the physics of Newton and Feynman all the way to biology! The new trend is dominant and overwhelms me at times! But I am “old generation” and would appreciate the most if the coming generations of scientists do whatever they want, what they consider relevant, and move on with the topic, far beyond what a single person can achieve in a lifetime! And even if it feels hard for me to follow, that doesn't count. The progress must be linked to the “here and now” and not to an individual. I am happy to see continuation in the journal, and also continuous change. My best wishes for the future!

Abe Lee and Aaron Wheeler: as out-going and in-coming editors of the journal, we can hardly believe that 20 years of Lab on a Chip have gone by. The past for Lab on a Chip has seen contribution-after-contribution that have changed the world, but the future has never been brighter. As the editorial baton passes from Abe to Aaron, we want to address two common questions that we receive frequently from authors. First, we are often asked about scope. It is widely known that our scope includes the following statement, “Submissions that describe novelty in both device and application are most likely to be published.” The latest volume of Lab on a Chip featured many wonderful examples of these kinds of papers, including the Rogers team's flexible devices that quantify analytes in sweat,⁴ the Goda group's deep neural networks applied to rapid image-based cell sorting,⁵ and the Budayova-Spano squad's membrane-based systems that combine in-line dialysis with X-ray diffraction measurements to determine protein structure.⁶ But the following statement in the scope is also important (and is perhaps less well known), “Outstanding papers featuring novelty in either the device or the application may also be published.” This is important, and we want the community to know – Lab on a Chip will always publish the best work that our community produces, including papers that primarily feature technological innovations like the Huang team's combination of acoustics and hydrodynamics for high-efficiency mixing,⁷ and those that primarily feature innovative applications, like the McDevitt group's COVID-19 clinical decision-making algorithm.⁸ Second, we are often asked about whether Lab on a Chip is a “microfluidics journal”. We love microfluidics, and the journal has been and will be the home of the best work that is driven from and enabled by innovations in microfluidics! But we owe a great debt to Andreas' genius in naming this journal “Lab on a Chip”. The still-revolutionary idea of the “lab on a chip” includes (by necessity) innovations in microfluidics, sensors, optics, electronics, imaging, materials, mechanical components, and much, much more. As the baton passes, we renew our commitment to publishing the best that this amazing, diverse community can come up with, in the myriad research areas that go into the Lab on a Chip. We look forward to reading your next great paper!

References

1. A. Manz and H. Minhas, Lab Chip, 2001, 1, 1N–2N,  10.1039/B106826C.
2. A. Manz and H. Minhas, Lab Chip, 2006, 6, 13–15,  10.1039/B516610C.
3. A. Manz, Lab Chip, 2008, 8, 13–14,  10.1039/B718103P.
4. S. B. Kim, J. Koo, J. Yoon, A. Hourlier-Fargette, B. Lee, S. Chen, S. Jo, J. Choi, Y. S. Oh, G. Lee, S. M. Won, A. J. Aranyosi, S. P. Lee, J. B. Model, P. V. Braun, R. Ghaffari, C. Park and J. A. Rogers, Lab Chip, 2020, 20, 84–92,  10.1039/C9LC01045A.
5. A. Isozaki, H. Mikami, H. Tezuka, H. Matsumura, K. Huang, M. Akamine, K. Hiramatsu, T. Iino, T. Ito, H. Karakawa, Y. Kasai, Y. Li, Y. Nakagawa, S. Ohnuki, T. Ota, Y. Qian, S. Sakuma, T. Sekiya, Y. Shirasaki, N. Suzuki, E. Tayyabi, T. Wakamiya, M. Xu, M. Yamagishi, H. Yan, Q. Yu, S. Yan, D. Yuan, W. Zhang, Y. Zhao, F. Arai, R. E. Campbell, C. Danelon, D. Di Carlo, K. Hiraki, Y. Hoshino, Y. Hosokawa, M. Inaba, A. Nakagawa, Y. Ohya, M. Oikawa, S. Uemura, Y. Ozeki, T. Sugimura, N. Nitta and K. Goda, Lab Chip, 2020, 20, 2263–2273,  10.1039/D0LC00080A.
6. N. Junius, S. Jaho, Y. Sallaz-Damaz, F. Borel, J.-B. Salmon and M. Budayova-Spano, Lab Chip, 2020, 20, 296–310,  10.1039/C9LC00651F.
7. H. Bachman, C. Chen, J. Rufo, S. Zhao, S. Yang, Z. Tian, N. Nama, P.-H. Huang and T. J. Huang, Lab Chip, 2020, 20, 1238–1248,  10.1039/C9LC01171D.
8. M. P. McRae, G. W. Simmons, N. J. Christodoulides, Z. Lu, S. K. Kang, D. Fenyo, T. Alcorn, I. P. Dapkins, I. Sharif, D. Vurmaz, S. S. Modak, K. Srinivasan, S. Warhadpande, R. Shrivastava and J. T. McDevitt, Lab Chip, 2020, 20, 2075–2085,  10.1039/D0LC00373E.

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