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Microfluidic ChipShop GmbH

Microfluidic ChipShop GmbH

MFCS focuses on the design, realization and volume fabrication of lab-on-a-chip systems and is one of the international leading companies. With its unique “Lab-on-a-Chip-Catalogue” the company offers off-the-shelf microfluidic solutions, also instruments like a PCR, a nucleic acid sample preparation or an electrophoresis system. The “Design-your-Lab-Concept” is MFCS’ well accepted approach to custom-design work for affordable budgets due to standardization concept consequently applied within the company and meanwhile world-wide accepted. Founded in 2002, MFCS has already been decorated with several rewards, namely being amongst the 10 best start-up companies in the nationwide contest of the “Deutscher Gründerpreis 2002” (German’s Founders prize) as well as the first place in the Thuringian Start-Up competition 2002, and the innovation award 2007 of the city of Jena. Amongst the founders and the 80 employees of the MFCS group, roughly 200 years of microsystem experience are accumulated. Experience in the field of application of microfluidic systems is at hand as well as respective production know-how for microfluidics. Coming from Jena, one of the optical centers in Europe, respective experience in the field of fabrication of polymer based micro-optical component lends for itself. Profound management experiences are one of the reasons for the economic success of the company. Management skills were proven in numerous custom and funded R&D projects on national, European and international level. 

 MFCS has extensive experience in the development of analytical systems for the detection of bacterial pathogens (e.g. co-ordinator of the BMBF-project ChipFlussPCR, the FP 7 IP Multisense Chip or the EDA-project PathoID-Chip). The MFCS team with its daughter company consists of roughly 80 people and is sustainably growing. Special expertise exists in the manufacturing of microstructured devices in polymers, especially with replication methods, namely injection molding and back-end processing like dicing, metallisation, surface modification and bonding. MFCS has microfabrication capabilities as well as own application laboratories, combining design know-how with application expertise. Added value for the consortium comes from the above mentioned manufacturing capabilities, the extensive network (member of most microtechnology activities in Germany) as well as the strategic location in Jena, one of the centers for optical technologies in Germany, with strong links to major players in the optical industry. The company is certified according to ISO 9001 and ISO 13485. 

Dr. Claudia Gärtner

Dr. Claudia Gärtner studied chemistry and biology and has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Düsseldorf, earned in 1996. Between 1996 and 1999, she worked as an assistant to the Director at the Institute for Microtechnology in Mainz (IMM), where she coordinated large scale international projects (e.g. TMR-project MICROSYNC, IMS-project HUTOP, LSF-project). In 1999 she was appointed Director of the Application Centre for Microtechnology in Jena, a daughter institution of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering. In 2002 she founded MFCS together with Dr. Holger Becker. Since April 2006 she is CEO of microfluidic ChipShop. She is coordinator of numerous R&D projects on national and international level, including the FP 7 IP Multisense Chip.   

Dr. Holger Becker

Dr. Holger Becker studied physics at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and Perth (Australia). He earned his PhD 1995 at the University of Heidelberg already in the field of microtechnology. Afterwards he joined the group of Prof. Andreas Manz at the Imperial College of London were he started his activity in microfluidics. Afterwards he was announced Managing Director of Jenoptik Mikrotechnik, a company which focus is equipment for microtechnology. From there, he spun out Mildendo to completely focus on polymer based microfluidic systems. From 2001 – 2004 he was appointed managing director of Intelligent Implants. He is co-founder of microfluidic ChipShop and Chief Scientific Officer of the company. Dr. Becker ran several R&D projects on national and international level.  

Richard Klemm 

Richard Klemm studied Biotechnology at the University of Applied Science in Jena.  Already in his diploma thesis (2006) he got involved in microfluidics and established a continuous flow PCR system consisting of microfluidic chip and respective instrumentation at the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) in Jena. Directly after his diploma thesis he joined microfluidic ChipShop. As department head for microfluidic and instrumentation he is in charge of the development of microfluidic systems in combination with the respective instrumentation to run the chips in order to provide users with an overall system approach. He is leading platform development project to realize standard instrumentation platforms for microfluidic devices on national and international level.