At Saratov State University, there has been opened a complex of laboratories, Digital Integrative Bioengineering Systems Interfaculty Technological Fab Lab, aimed to create prototypes of new devices and produce small series of devices.
The main advantage of the fab lab is the access to high-tech equipment and the opportunity to exchange experience and ideas. The concept of the laboratory complex is that any university specialists can come to an equipped room and try to implement their ideas – to make a sample of an improved device with their own hands, conduct an engineering experiment, and quickly test the theory in practice.
The SSU Fab Lab includes four laboratories in the following areas – additive technologies, bioengineering, robotics, as well as electronics and technology.
Anatolii Karavayev, Chair of the Department of Dynamic Modelling and Biomedical Engineering, the Institute of Physics, SSU, commented on the need to combine related scientific disciplines.
‘The idea is that our students, having received theoretical knowledge at lectures, at seminars in such laboratories, could bring their project to the final product. For example, in the technological laboratory, they use 3D-printing to make the device, in the robotics and electronics laboratory, students develop and assemble electronic gubbins, and in the bioengineering laboratory, they test the device.’
This semester, young researchers have plunged into the developing and producing their own devices. For example, Dmitri Yezhov, a second-year master's student at the Institute of Physics, is developing a machine controller with numerical control.
‘Now, we have the opportunity to create prototypes of electronic devices, mechanical elements, and equipment for experiments much faster and better. It would be impossible to develop some projects without a complex of laboratories,’ the student shared his opinion.
The Interfaculty Technological Fab Lab conducts research on methods for quantifying stress levels. Elizaveta Dubinkina, a second-year student of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine and Medical Technologies, needs a large amount of experimental data in this study, which can be obtained in the new laboratories.
‘Today, it is possible to simultaneously record several biological signals, thereby, accelerating progress in several scientific studies at once. Moreover, the new equipment that has appeared in the laboratories opens up a lot of opportunities for research and its testing right at the laboratories,’ Elizaveta Dubinkina said.
As part of the cooperation with LLC “Science and Innovation”, young scientists of the university have already developed a unique digital sensor of a finger photoplethysmogram (the sensor of a device that registers pulse waves). Experimental studies have now been launched in the new complex of laboratories to develop methods for personalised diagnostics of pathologies of the circulatory and respiratory systems; a youth project is carried out aimed at developing methods for diagnosing the health of newborns; a project is implemented to create a complex of laboratory workshops that teach students to develop electronic devices based on programmable microcontrollers.
The laboratory was established as part of the Priority 2030 programme Russian Ministry of Higher Education and Science of Russia (implemented as part of the Science and Universities national project).
The text about the SSU fab lab is published on the website of the Priority 2030 programme.
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