Acknowledgments_2008_Micromixers

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Preface
In the past decade, microfluidics has developed at a fast pace. The main
driving forces for this research are applications in chemistry and biochemistry.
The science and technology of microfluidics cover a wide spectrum ranging
from fundamental studies to real applications in industry and laboratories.
This book focuses on an important subtopic of microfluidics, namely mixing
at the microscale. The science of such mixing has emerged from reports on
newly fabricated devices building onto an extensive collection of established
knowledge. Mixing at the microscale and micromixers are important because
they represent a reaction platform for chemistry at the microscale. Due to its
applied nature, the book will discuss practical issues in designing, fabrication
and characterization of micromixers. The book is intended most importantly as
a reference for practising engineers in the chemical and biochemical industries
(but is at a level of difficulty appropriate to serve as a course text for upper-level
undergraduates and graduate students). With this objective in mind, the book
is organized into chapters dealing with fundamentals, fabrication technologies,
practical design examples, characterization techniques, and applications. The
author will be grateful for any feedback and comment from engineers and
researchers in the field leading to the improvement of the present book.
Acknowledgments
This book was written under an extreme time constraint. Over a span of
twelve months, besides numerous duties in teaching, research, and service, I
needed to find the time to compile the existing material and to write the text.
Fortunately, after two semesters of heavy teaching duties the Spring semester
2007 was without major teaching commitments. I would like to thank my school
management for this precious free time from January to April 2007. Without
this time slot, I would not have been able to complete this book according to
plan. I would like to express my gratitude to the many colleagues, research
staff, and graduate students for their support and inspiration. Parts of the
published works of my former and current PhD students Wu Zhigang and Jiao
Zhenjun have been included in this book. I really appreciate their hard work
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and collaboration. I would like to thank all my colleagues from the microfluidics
community, whose works have been cited as examples in this book. Due the huge
amount of available literature, I could not cite and review everyone’s work, and
apologies to colleagues who do not find their works reviewed here. I would like
to thank Dr Nigel Hollingworth, Publisher of the Micro and Nano Technologies
Series of William Andrew Inc. for his constant support during this book project.
Last but not least, I would like to express my love and gratitude to my wife
Thuy-Mai and my two children Thuy-Linh and Nam-Tri, for their unconditional
love, support, patience and sacrifice. The book indeed took up a large amount
of my time at home, where I should be spending quality time with my family.
I promise my family that this book project shall be the last one for a while.
Nam-Trung Nguyen
Singapore, December 2007