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The project seeks to design and build a flexible robotic platform to automate incubation and processing of hundreds of mammalian cell cultures growing in shake flasks, with integrated cell growth and metabolite analysis. Shake flasks model larger scale bioreactors, have ample volume for frequent sampling for analysis and support process development and cell line stability studies. The goal is to ensure consistent, reproducible cell processing for high throughput bioprocess research. This would facilitate systematic, parallel investigation of multiple parameters influencing cell growth or productivity, e.g. media formulation or feed regime. "Smart" software would be developed to model the process and mimic the culture expert, and thus automatically decide how and when to process each individual culture e.g. subculture to a target cell count, or when to feed to maintain a set glucose level.

The design and construction of an ideal material for organic semiconductor devices requires the careful consideration of a range of physical properties. In some cases, what would represent good materials characteristics for one type of device may be highly detrimental to the efficiency of another. Intermolecular pi-pi interactions symbolise one good example: in organic light emitting devices, photoluminescence is quenched by these attractions and the device efficiency is reduced dramatically; in organic field effect transistors (OFETs), it is desirable to promote pi-pi interactions throughout the bulk, so that charge mobility can be maximised. In this proposal, we aim to prepare materials for organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices and OFETs. The novelty in this work originates from very recent results, in which we demonstrate that highly soluble materials with conformational freedom in solution are able to self-assemble in the solid state to give highly planar and conjugated structures. Such levels of planarity, which maximise the possibility of pi-pi interactions, have only been achieved previously with ladder or ribbon type structures which possess inherent solubility problems. In our systems, long range planarity can be achieved through the use of weak, non-covalent interactions; to date, this approach has not been given significant consideration and is therefore waiting to be exploited.