This paper describes lessons we have learned over the past several years about teaching the design of modern embedded computing systems. An embedded computing system uses microprocessors to implement parts of the functionality of non-general-purpose computers. Early microprocessor-based design courses, based on simple microprocessors, emphasized input and output (I/O). Modern high-performance embedded processors are capable of a great deal of computation in addition to I/O tasks. Taking advantage of this capability requires a knowledge of fundamental concepts in the analysis and design of concurrent computing systems. We believe that next-generation courses in embedded computing should move away from the discussion of components and toward the discussion of analysis and design of systems.

Microfluidic biochips are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers and are able to integrate the necessary functions for biochemical analysis on-chip. In this paper we are interested in flow-based biochips, in which the flow of liquid is manipulated using integrated microvalves. By combining several microvalves, more complex units, such as micropumps, switches, mixers, and multiplexers, can be built. The manufacturing technology, soft lithography, used for the flow-based biochips is advancing faster than Moore's law, resulting in increased architectural complexity. However, the designers are still using full-custom and bottom-up, manual techniques in order to design and implement these chips. As the chips become larger and the applications become more complex, the manual methodologies will not scale, becoming highly inadequate. Therefore, for the first time to our knowledge,we propose a top-down architectural synthesis methodology for the flow-based biochips. Starting from a given biochemical application and a microfluidic component library, we are interested in synthesizing a biochip architecture, i.e., performing component allocation from the library based on the biochemical application, generating the biochip schematic (netlist) and then performing physical synthesis (deciding the placement of the microfluidic components on the chip and performing routing of the microfluidic channels), such that the application completion time is minimized. We evaluate our proposed approach by synthesizing architectures for real-life applications as well as synthetic benchmarks.

Pyocyanin is a toxin produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Here we describe a novel paper-based electrochemical sensor for pyocyanin detection, manufactured with a simple and inexpensive approach based on electrode printing on paper. The resulting sensors constitute an effective electrochemical method to quantify pyocyanin in bacterial cultures without the conventional time consuming pretreatment of the samples. The electrochemical properties of the paper-based sensors were evaluated by ferri/ferrocyanide as a redox mediator, and showed reliable sensing performance. The paper-based sensors readily allow for the determination of pyocyanin in bacterial cultures with high reproducibility, achieving a limit of detection of 95 nM and a sensitivity of 4.30 μA/μM in standard culture media. Compared to the similar commercial ceramic based sensors, it is a 2.3-fold enhanced performance. The simple in-house fabrication of sensors for pyocyanin quantification allows researchers to understand in vitro adaptation of P. aeruginosa infections via rapid screenings of bacterial cultures that otherwise are expensive and time-consuming.