The Advanced Micro and Nanosystems Laboratory (AMNL), founded in 2004, is affiliated with Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Inst. of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, and Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. With a unifying theme centered upon the development and application of novel micro/nano devices and systems, AMNL’s research ranges from fundamental science, to applied biotechnology, to emerging engineering issues. Many of our present research projects involve the manipulation and characterization of biological cells and nanoscaled materials.

The actively pursued areas are micro-nano device design and fabrication (MEMS sensors and actuators, bioMEMS, and NEMS); microrobotic manipulation of biological cells; microstructure control; cellular mechanobiology; and nanorobotic manipulation of nanomaterials and biomolecules. Micro, nano, and bio are integrative components of our research, in which technological innovations are made in MEMS, nanotechnology, micro-nano-robotics, and biomechanics to better understand basic life sciences problems, facilitate biological/biomedical studies, and enable us to tackle fundamental and applied biomedical/clinical and emerging engineering problems.

Taking a multidisciplinary approach in research, our dynamic team consists of researchers from various backgrounds in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and biomedical engineering. We work with an exciting network of clinician scientists, biologists, nanomaterial scientists, and many industries inside and outside Canada.

Key Words:

  • automation at micro-nanometer scales
  • microrobotic and nanorobotic manipulation
  • optical and electron microscopy
  • computer vision microscopy
  • robotic cell surgery
  • medical robotics
  • nano manufacturing
  • precision instrumentation
  • MEMS
  • microfluidics
  • biomedical micro devices
  • micro-nanofabrication
  • cell biology
  • disease diagnostics
  • cellular biophysics
  • automated instrumentation for biomedical and clinical use

Recent Events

AMNL presented papers at IEEE ICRA'14 in Hong Kong. Jun Liu's paper received the Best Student Paper Award. (06/2014)

Brandon Chen gave live demos of our nanomanipulation system under SEM at Georgia Tech. Y. Sun spoke at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. (05/2014)

Y. Sun was elected into the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). (04/2014)

Y. Sun gave an invited seminar in Dept. Biomedical Engineering at Ohio State University. (03/2014)

Book "Emerging Tools for Micro and Nano Manipulation" will be published in Dec. 2014, by Wiley-VCH. (02/2014)

J. Liu and Y. Zheng presented at IEEE MEMS'14 in San Francisco. AMNL received UofT's Connaught Innovation Award. (01/2014)

Y. Sun gave a plenary talk at IEEE Robio'13 in Shenzhen, China. (12/2013)

The new S4800 scanning electron microscope, supporting our nanorobotic manipulation research, is up running. (11/2013)

Derek Pyne presented at MicroTAS'13 in Freiburg, Germany. (10/2013)

Brandon Chen completed his Ph.D. defense. Alumnus, Dr. Chris Moraes officially accepted a faculty position from McGill University. (09/2013)

Y. Sun gave a keynote talk at 3M-Nano'13 in Suzhou, China. (08/2013)

Luke MacQueen completed his postdoctoral research in our group and joined Kit Parker's group at Harvard University. (07/2013)

Y. Sun gave an invited talk at Transducers'13 in Barcelona, Spain. (06/2013)

AMNL presented at IEEE ICRA'13 in Karlsruhe, Germany. (05/2013)

Mark Cachia and Yuan Wei received NSERC Scholarships. (04/2012)

Y. Sun was elected Fellow of The Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC). (03/2013)

AMNL alumnus, Dr. Chris Moraes and Y. Sun attended the NSERC awards ceremony celebrating Canada's Top Natural Sciences and Engineering Researchers in Ottawa. (02/2013)

Y. Zheng presented at IEEE MEMS'13 in Taipei. (01/2013)

Event archives [more...]