Professor Yu Sun (MIE). (Photo: Sylvie Li / Shoot Studio)
Congratulations to Professor Yu Sun (MIE) on the Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Prof Sun received this prestigious award for “foundational contributions to robotics and automation at micro-nano scales and pioneering contributions to robotic cell manipulation.”
Yu Sun was among the first to invent robotic approaches for automated cell manipulation. He established a framework for autonomous robotic cell manipulation that assimilates high resolution, low depth-of-field microscopy visual feedback, high-precision position feedback, and nanoNewton force feedback. His work is widely used in robotic micro- and nano-manipulation and paved the way for further development in automated cell manipulation. He developed the first robotic human sperm and oocyte surgery system with minimal invasiveness for clinical in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. He pioneered magnetic micromanipulation technologies for performing precise untethered manipulation and measurement inside a single cell and deep in tissue. He also invented the world’s first fully closed-loop controlled nanorobotic system for operation inside electron microscopes, with which he realized automated measurement of nanomaterials and biomaterials, and achieved targeted extraction of DNA from a cell nucleus for gene mapping. Sun is the founding Director of the Robotics Institute at the University of Toronto, home of the largest and most diversified robotics research program in Canada.
– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto Robotics Institute’s News Site on August 2, 2022 by Aidan Samuels
