News & Events

Date: October 28, 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 9:30 am - 12:30 pm (Registration starts at 9:15 am)
Venue: Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two, G/F, Run Run Shaw Building
Keynote Speaker: Professor Yu Sun, University of Toronto, Canada

All members of the HKU community and the general public are welcome to join. Seats for on-site participants are limited. Interested parties please register through the link below by October 28, 2025 18:00pm: 
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=103096 

A confirmation email will be sent to participants who have successfully registered.

Abstract:
The capability of manipulating micro and nanometer-sized objects, such as cells and nanomaterials opens new frontiers in robotic surgery, disease diagnostics, industrial applications and enables new discoveries in many disciplines such as biology, medicine, and materials science. This lecture will begin with a brief review of the evolution of the robotic micromanipulation field, followed by an overview of challenges, opportunities, and representative advances recently made in this field. Examples of robotic cell manipulation systems for clinical surgery and drug screen will be given; sub-micrometer position control and sub-nano Newton force control for realizing 3D intracellular and intra-tissue manipulation and measurement will be introduced; and mechanical nano-surgery of chemoresistant tumors will be discussed.

About the keynote speaker:

Professor Yu Sun, University of Toronto

Professor Yu Sun is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto (UofT). He is a Tier I Canada Research Chair and was the founding Director of the UofT Robotics Institute. He is a member of all the three national academies of Canada: Canadian Academy of Engineering; The Academy of Science of Royal Society of Canada, and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He is also an International Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME, AIMBE, AAAS, NAI, CSME, and EIC for his work on micro-nano robotic systems and devices. Among the awards he received were an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship, NSERC Synergy Award of Innovation, IEEE McNaughton Gold Medal, IEEE EMBS Technical Achievement Award, and IEEE NTC Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology. He is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Trans. Automation Science and Engineering and an editorial board member of the AAAS journal, Science Robotics.

Panellists:

Professor Bobak Mosadegh, Cornell University, USA

Professor Mosadegh is currently an Associate Professor at Cornell University. He also served as the Director of the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging and was the convener for the ISO working group on cardiac occluders. His research is most recently focused on developing next-generation medical devices for surgical and minimally invasive procedures. These devices are designed to provide unprecedented performance by designing systems that leverage enabling technologies, such as 3D printing, soft robotics, machine learning, and mixed reality.

Professor Lixin Dong, City University of Hong Kong

Professor Lixin Dong is a Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include micro/nanorobotics, atomic manufacturing, intelligent nano-electromechanical systems, and nano-biomedical devices. He was the Vice President of Educational Activities (2022 and 2023) and Conferences (2019 and 2020) of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council and has been a Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology and an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE). He was a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the IEEE T-ASE Googol Best New Application Paper Award.

Professor Changhong Cao, McGill University, Canada

Professor Cao is an Assistant Professor, Chwang-Seto Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, and Canada Research Chair in small scale materials and manufacturing. His expertise spans transfer printing technologies, experimental nano-mechanics of advanced structures, and additive manufacturing platform development. As the lead author, his research has been published in prestigious journals, including Science Advances, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, and ACS Nano. He has also been recognized with the Young Leaders Award from TMS and the Young Scientist Award from Springer Nature Microsystem and Nano-engineering.

Professor Yajing Shen, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Professor Yajing Shen is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received the Best Manipulation Paper Award in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in 2011, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Japan Chapter Young Award in 2011, the Early Career Awards of Hong Kong UGC in 2014, the Big-on-Small Award at MARSS in 2018, IEEE Distinguished lecturer in 2019, CityU Outstanding Supervisor Award in 2020. He also received the “National Excellent Young Scientist Fund (Hong Kong & Macau)” for the topic “micro/nano robot” in 2019.

We look forward to seeing you in the lecture. Thank you.