MIDAS · IDUN section · DTU Health Tech

Edwin
En-Te
Hwu

Hacking consumer electronics into low-cost scientific instruments.

Associate Professor at DTU Health Tech, and lead of MIDAS (Micro Medical Devices and Hardware Hacking Based Technologies) in the IDUN section.

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Edwin En-Te Hwu speaking on stage MIDAS Group logo

Origin story

Why break a Blu-ray drive?

Professor, are you seriously telling us to break our gaming consoles for science? Yes, I am :)

Hardware hacking is my unorthodox way of research. We take mass-produced consumer electronics, like the optical pickup from a CD, DVD or Blu-ray drive or the piezo buzzer from a kid's alarm, and turn them into instruments that labs and classrooms can actually afford.

The same spirit runs through our skin work: a painless tape strip and an atomic force microscope, used to read the nanotexture of the skin barrier.

Mass production already did the expensive engineering. A discarded drive can focus a laser and move with the speed a scientific instrument needs, so we treat e-waste as raw material, not trash. We share open designs so other labs, classrooms and citizen scientists can build them too, including through LEGO2NANO.

AFM probe meeting a painted hand, symbolizing nanoscience on human skin

Focus

Two things we work on

Hardware hacking for science

DIY and low-cost atomic force microscopes built around Blu-ray optical pickups, including high-speed AFM. We also build lab-on-a-disc tools such as APELLA, an open-source platform assembled from everyday electronics.

PCB-based DIY AFM instrument and assembly

Skin nanotexture

AFM on tape strips to read the nanotexture of corneocytes in the stratum corneum, including in atopic dermatitis. We use the Effective Corneocyte Topographical Index (ECTI) and deep learning to count circular nano-size objects on the scans. The method is non-invasive, and the images are quantitative.

AFM skin nanotexture scan grid from atopic dermatitis research

Publications and talks

Selected work

  1. Assessment of the Severity of Atopic Dermatitis Using Atomic Force Microscopy Analysis of Skin Tape Strips
    Allergy (2025) · doi:10.1111/all.70170
  2. GigaScience paper on AI-assisted counting of skin nanotexture features (the "every green dot" work)
    GigaScience (2024) · doi:10.1093/gigascience/giae095
  3. Open hardware for low-cost AFM, including HardwareX (2022) and later PCB / piezo-buzzer instruments
    HardwareX and follow-on open instruments
  4. APELLA: Open-Source, miniaturized All-in-One powered Lab-on-a-Disc platform
    HardwareX (2023) · doi:10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00449
  5. Hacking CD/DVD/Blu-ray for Biosensing
    ACS Sensors (2018) · doi:10.1021/acssensors.8b00340
  6. Featured in Nature Nanotechnology, "Creativity unleashed" (2015)
    Nature Nanotechnology · nature.com/articles/nnano.2015.95
  7. Talks, classroom builds and short clips on YouTube
    @EdwinHwuHacks4Science

YouTube

Watch the work

Selected talks and lab videos from @EdwinHwuHacks4Science. More are in the playlists below.

Hacking CD/DVD/Blu-ray Optical Pickup Unit (OPU) for Fun and Scientific Research
DIY Atomic Force Microscope for Kids: Expo 2025 Osaka Best Practice Presentation (Japanese)
Nanoscopic Clues Your Skin Is Hiding: Skin Nanotexture Biometrics, published in Allergy
Full operation process of the open-source low-cost high-speed AFM
APELLA: open-source lab-on-a-disc platform
Talk at MIT Open Metrology, 2022
Tape stripping method, by Ellen Raun

Playlists

PlaylistHacking Optical Drives (CD/DVD/Blu-ray) PlaylistDIY & Low-Cost AFM PlaylistSkin Nanotexture & Dermal AFM PlaylistTalks & Keynotes PlaylistLab-on-a-Disc PlaylistShorts & Clips PlaylistOpen source low cost 3D printable nanopositioner

Contact

Find me

GroupMIDAS @ DTU Health Tech ProfileDTU profile GrokipediaEdwin En-Te Hwu LinkedInedwinhacks4science CompanyMIDAS@DTU X@EdwinHwu ScholarGoogle Scholar ORCID0000-0002-5971-4978 YouTube@EdwinHwuHacks4Science Email[email protected] CalendarBook a meeting

I also serve as CSO and co-founder of Loretta, a cosmetics science company, and previously co-founded BluSense Diagnostics.

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