Bioengineering-device-design takes from the biological, physical, and engineering sciences to create technologies that increase the understanding of living proteins, nucleic acids, tissues, and cells. The discipline of bioengineering offers a wide variety of new therapeutics, biologics, processes, and materials. The Bio-MEMS technology, which involves microfluidic chips made from biological miroelectromechanical systems, will allow for labs on a chip that will have micro or pico-liter-size chemical reaction chambers in contrast to the milliliter-and-more sizes used by current chemical reactors. This will result in a decrease in the cost of labs-on-chip consumables because less reagent per reaction is required, as well as reduction in the amount of time needed for testing. The Microfluidics Roadmap for the Life Sciences forecasts that by 2008, fifty percent of the microfluidics market will be made up of bioengineering applications. Amgen, Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Roche Diagnostics and Tyco International are among the organizations that are developing or already utilizing microfluidic chips for their own, largely medical, bioengineering applications. Medical testing in in vitro labs consists of sample preparation, analytic separation, and detection. Labs-on-chip consolidate these three functions into a single, self-cleaning handheld device, necessitating electronic control over the microfluidic pumps, processes, and valves. Precise metrology is required for ensuring that the processing on the lab-on-chip is accurate, fast, and repeatable.