Building a low-cost microscope-based cell incubator as an undergraduate biophysics project

Observing changes in living cells in their native environments is essential for many biophysics experiments. For some cell types this means that a microscope must be fitted with a cell incubator that controls temperature, humidity and potentially carbon dioxide or other environmental factors over the period of days for long term experiments. These systems are expensive and are out of the budget available at many regional undergraduate universities. In this poster we will share the microscope-based cell incubator that we have developed using plexiglass, Arduinos, and our small machine shop, and a budget of under $1000. This project has not only led to a low-cost cell incubator that can be used in our research and upper-level classrooms, but it has also helped my undergraduate students develop useful skills as they prepare for graduate studies in fields related to physics. I will share how we worked to develop these skills within this project.