Yu Sun

Yu Sun is a member of two national academies of Canada: Lifetime Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE); Lifetime Fellow, The Academy of Science of Royal Society of Canada (RSC). He is a Professor in the Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and is jointly appointed in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Toronto (UofT). He is a McLean Senior Faculty Fellow at UofT, and the Canada Research Chair in Micro and Nano Engineering Systems (Tier I).

Sun is the founding Director of UofT Robotics Institute that has over 20 faculty members from mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, and hospitals. The Robotics Institute is located on the fifth floor of the Myhal Centre. As the Faculty Director, Sun directed the University Nanofabrication Centre during 01/2012-12/2013. The Center hosts 50 million dollar equipment and has a group of technical and administrative staff, providing open access to UofT users from across faculties and to external users from both academia and industry.

Sun joined UofT in July 2004 and was promoted through the ranks of associate professor and full professor in 2009 and 2012. In 2014, he was elected into the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) and in 2019, he was elected into the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). In 1996, he obtained his Bachelor’s degree from Dalian University of Technology that awarded him an Alumni Achievement Award in 2015. He obtained an M.S. degree from the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) in 1999. Sun was on the University’s basketball team (1992-1994) at Dalian University of Technology. While Sun was in Beijing, he was among the 18 professional TOEFL and GRE lecturers at the Beijing New Oriental School (1998-1999). In 2001, Sun received an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Univ. of Minnesota in 2003, under Prof. Bradley J. Nelson. Prior to joining the faculty of Toronto in July 2004, Sun did his postdoctoral research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zürich).

Sun established in 2004 and directs the Advanced Micro and Nanosystems Laboratory at UofT. Leveraging his experience in micro-nanorobotics and cleanroom micro-nanofabrication, his team has strong expertise in (1) developing micro-nanomanipulation techniques and intelligent micro-nanorobotic systems; (2) designing novel micro-nano devices and developing new micro-nanofabrication processes. The research group manipulates, characterizes, and senses biological tissues, cells, molecules, and nanomaterials for both fundamental studies (e.g., molecule screen and genetics) and clinical/industrial applications (e.g., robotic cell surgery and precision instrumentation for industrial automation). Here is a 1-min video introducing the group’s research.