The SML develops state-of-the-art micro/nano bio-robotics, microscale machines, and soft actuators — artificial cilia, untethered microrobots, and microfluidic platforms — to manipulate living organisms, visualize flows, and decode the hemodynamics of the heart and great vessels.
From the sperm of zebrafish to the pulmonary arteries of patients — we build the instruments that make micro-flow measurable, programmable, and clinically meaningful. Our work has appeared on the covers of Lab on a Chip, Chemical Engineering Journal, Advanced Materials Technologies, and Advanced Intelligent Systems.
Biomedical micro-electro-mechanical systems for cell and organism-scale experimentation.
Soft lithography, SMA-actuated devices, and building-block microrobot design.
Flow analysis in aortic aneurysms, pulmonary arteries, and embryonic great vessels.
μPIV, OCT-μPIV, stereoscopic PIV, and optical coherence imaging of pulsatile flow.
Recent milestones from Smart Micro-robotics & Lab-Chip (SML), including new publications, student achievements, graduation news, and featured work.
Congratulations to Prashant Kishor Sharma, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, on receiving the Excellence Award at the Grand Review, 2026 NCKU Research Competition. We celebrate his research achievements and this recognition of his work.
Thrilled to share that our team has been awarded the Gold Medal at the 2026 Taiwan Innotech Expo (TIE) in recognition of our granted patent, “Micro-Robots and the Fabrication Methods.”
Beyond the award and the tremendous execution of our core team in rolling out our first micro-platform architecture, this marks a major commercial inflection point: we have de-risked the fabrication scalability of micro-scale robotics to unlock a defensible moat in the multi-billion-dollar Point-of-Care (PoC) diagnostics market.
By delivering decentralized, automated micro-manipulation with superior unit economics compared to traditional lab instrumentation, we are now opening conversations with visionary deep-tech and medtech venture capital partners to accelerate pilot validation, scale manufacturing, and capture high-growth clinical markets together.
Dineshkumar Loganathan, K.-W. Chen, and Chia-Yuan Chen present generative modeling for spatiotemporal prediction and optimization of microrobot-assisted mixing in Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Article 140886. Read the paper ↗
Dineshkumar Loganathan, Pu-Hsiang Wang, and Chia-Yuan Chen demonstrate a magnetic-microactuator-enabled microfluidic assay for programmable zebrafish transport, training-dependent behavioral adaptation, and short-term retention in Biosensors, 16(9), 480. Read the paper ↗
Prashant Kishor Sharma, Tsung-Yen Lu, and Chia-Yuan Chen present reconfigurable magnetic microrobotic assemblies that self-assemble, actuate, transport particles bidirectionally, and reversibly disassemble in iScience, 29(9), 117208. Read the paper ↗
Dineshkumar completed his Ph.D. and now joins the SML alumni community. We celebrate his graduation and contributions to magnetic microrobotics, artificial cilia, and lab-on-a-chip research.
The lab's Advanced Intelligent Systems paper on data-driven, microrobot-assisted flow manipulation was published online. View publication
Dineshkumar Loganathan and Chia-Yuan Chen report programmable assembly for cooperative particle manipulation in Micromachines, 17(7), 834. Read the paper ↗
Prashant Kishor Sharma, Wen-Kai Yang, and Chia-Yuan Chen present a lumped-parameter model incorporating valve dynamics and ventricular pressure–volume behavior in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. Read the paper ↗
Dineshkumar Loganathan and collaborators demonstrate multiple magnetic microrobots for controlled, non-invasive larval transport in Sensors and Actuators Reports, 12, 100484. Read the paper ↗
We are looking for motivated Ph.D. and master’s students who want to work at the forefront of microfluidics, artificial intelligence, and microrobotics.
Students will have opportunities to develop intelligent lab-on-a-chip systems, magnetic microrobots, AI-assisted flow control, and innovative biomedical microdevices in a collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment.
Interested applicants are invited to send a CV, academic transcript, and a brief statement of research interests to chiayuan@mx.nthu.edu.tw ↗.
We build small machines that do big things — micromixers, microgrippers, untethered magnetic microrobots, and flow-visualization systems that turn biology into quantifiable fluid dynamics.
BioMEMS are at the heart of everything we do. From serpentine microchannels that capture and orient zebrafish larvae without harming them, to artificial cilia arrays that activate sperm motility, our devices turn the microscale into a programmable experimental stage.
A recent line of work uses shape memory alloy (SMA) actuation to build miniaturized biomaterial-printing nozzles and catheter-intervention actuators — devices small enough to enter the vasculature yet robust enough for real biomedical tasks.
The lab has spent over a decade refining magnetically-actuated artificial cilia — PDMS-based hair-like structures that beat, bundle, and school like biological cilia. By distributing them in fish-schooling patterns or driving them asymmetrically, we induce 3-D vortical flow inside 2-D microchannels for high-performance mixing and propulsion.
More recently, we've scaled up to untethered microrobots and microgrippers — millimeter-scale agents controlled by external magnetic fields, with building-block modularity and multi-robot choreography for flow manipulation.
On the clinical side, the lab analyzes patient-specific hemodynamics — abdominal aortic aneurysms, pulmonary arteries, stent-graft endoleaks — using a combination of CFD modeling and particle image velocimetry. We also study zebrafish cardiovascular function as a high-throughput surrogate for drug and additive screening.
A long-running collaboration with Prof. Kerem Pekkan (CMU → Koç University) applies these tools to embryonic great-vessel microcirculation and neonatal cardiopulmonary bypass.
We develop and apply flow-visualization methods — confocal μPIV, OCT-μPIV, stereoscopic PIV — to resolve pulsatile, three-dimensional flow fields inside microchannels and living embryos. The lab's OCT-μPIV technique, developed at Carnegie Mellon, enables non-invasive depth-resolved flow measurement in tissue.
Visualization also serves our industrial collaborations — notably wafer-rinse hydrodynamics at the NCKU-TSMC Joint Developed Project, where understanding flow at the microscale directly translates into process yield.
成大台積電聯合研發中心計畫 — microfluidic hydrodynamics for semiconductor processing.
Long-standing collaboration on embryonic hemodynamics and PIV methodology with Pekkan Lab.
Funding proposal reviewer for NWO (Netherlands) and FNRS (Belgium), ACS reviewer certificate.
Former Director, Science & Technology Division, TECO Los Angeles (2020–2024).
A chronological record of peer-reviewed research from the Chen Lab and collaborators. Filter by year to navigate; covers, editor's picks, and featured papers are flagged inline.
Loganathan D., Chen K.-W., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Wang P.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Chen C.-Y.*
Liao P.-C., Huang C.-Y., Weng W.-Z., Chang K.-S., Chen C.-Y.*, Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Wang P.-H., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Lu T.-Y., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Yang W.-K., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Tung Y.-C., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Lin T.-Y., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., He D.-M., Chen K.-W., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Ou Yang T., Chen C.-Y., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Wei P.-W., Loganathan D., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Sharma P., Loganathan D., Chen M.-L., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Cheng C.-H., Wei P.-W., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Kao L.-T.-E., Cheng C.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Yang K.-H., Loganathan D., Chen M.-L., Sahadevan V., Chen C.-Y., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Ou C.-Y., Hsu C.-W., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Hsieh C.-L., Ou C.-Y., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Chaung Y., Lu Y.-H., Cheng C.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Vignesh S., Loganathan D., Chuang Y., Lo C.-F., Chen C.-Y., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Wu S.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Loganathan D., Hsieh C.-L., Shi B.-E., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Vignesh S., Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Subendran S., Wang C.-W., Loganathan D., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Panigrahi B., Vignesh S., Chen C.-Y.*
Subendran S., Wang C.-W., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Karthick M., Chen C.-Y.*
Karthick M., Chen C.-Y.*
Subendran S., Wang C.-W., Chen C.-Y.*
Wang Y.-F., Chen I.-W., Subendran S., Wang C.-W., Fu T.-F.*, Chen C.-Y.*
Tang C.-H., Panigrahi B., Chen W.-T., Chen C.-Y.*, Chen C.-Y.*
Mani K., Lin W.-C., Wang C.-F., Panigrahi B., Wu Y.-J., Wu C.-L., Chen C.-Y.*
Lai Y.-C., Chen C.-Y., Hung Y.-T., Chen C.-Y.*
Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Danis U., Rasooli R., Chen C.-Y., Dur O., Sitti M., Pekkan K.*
Lu C.-H., Tang C.-H., Ghayal N., Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*, Chen C.-Y.*
Lu Y.-H., Mani K., Hsu W.-T., Hajari S., Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Bordones A., Lerous M., Kheyfets V., Wu Y.-A., Chen C.-Y., Finol E.*
Mani K., Hsieh Y.-C., Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Panigrahi B., Lu C.-H., Ghayal N., Chen C.-Y.*
Chen C.-Y.*, Panigrahi B., Chong K.-S., Li W.-H., Liu Y.-L., Lu T.-Y.
Wu Y.-A., Panigrahi B., Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*
Wu Y.-A., Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Huang P.-Y., Panigrahi B., Lu C.-H., Huang P.-F., Chen C.-Y.*
Chen J.-M., Chen C.-Y., Wong C. P., Chen C.-Y.*
Mani K., Chang Chien T.-C., Panigrahi B., Chen C.-Y.*
Lu Y.-H., Mani K., Panigrahi B., Hsu W.-T., Chen C.-Y.*
Pekkan K.*, Chang B., Usla F., Mani K., Chen C.-Y., Holzman R.
Chen C.-Y.*, Chang Chien T.-C., Mani K., Tsai H.-Y.
Chen C.-Y.*, Hsu C.-C., Mani K., Panigrahi B.
Chen C.-Y.*, Chen C.-Y., Hsiao P.-H., Hsu C.-C., Mani K.
Chung C.*, Chen Y.-J., Chen P.-C., Chen C.-Y.
Chen C.-Y.*, Cheng L.-Y., Hsu C.-C., Mani K.
Chen C.-Y.*, Lin C.-Y., Hu Y.-T., Cheng L.-Y., Hsu C.-C.
Antón R.*, Chen C.-Y., Hung M.-Y., Finol E. A., Pekkan K.
Chen C.-Y.*, Yao C.-Y., Lin C.-Y., Wang C.-W.
Chen C.-Y.*, Lin C.-Y., Hu Y.-T.
Chen C.-Y., Cheng C.-M.*
Chen C.-Y., Antón R., Hung M.-Y., Menon P. G., Patrick M. J., Finol E. A., Pekkan K.*
Lu Y.-H., Chen C.-Y.*, Menon P., Liu K.-T., Lin H.-H.
Chen C.-Y.*, Chen C.-Y.
Chen C.-Y.*, Chen C.-Y., Lin C.-Y., Hu Y.-T.
Chen C.-Y., Pekkan K.*
Chen C.-Y., Menon P., Kowalski W., Pekkan K.*
Menon P., Teslovich N., Chen C.-Y., Undar A., Pekkan K.*
Chen C.-Y., Patrick M. J., Corti P., Kowalski W., Roman B. L., Pekkan K.*
Lara M., Chen C.-Y., Mannor P., Dur O., Pekkan K.*
Corti P., Young S., Chen C.-Y., Patrick M. J., Rochon E., Pekkan K.*, Roman B. L.
Patrick M. J., Chen C.-Y., Frakes D. H., Dur O., Pekkan K.*
Goktas S., Chen C.-Y., Kowalski W. J., Pekkan K.
Meet the current researchers and alumni of Smart Micro-robotics & Lab-Chip (SML). Alumni have continued into academia, semiconductor R&D, technology industries, and graduate programs worldwide.
Academic record, professional trajectory, and honors — from Carnegie Mellon to TECO Los Angeles, National Cheng Kung University, and National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan.
To advance micro/nano bio-robotics as quantitative tools for biofluid dynamics, translating precise microscale measurement and manipulation into more efficient biomedical devices and new approaches to cardiovascular diagnosis and treatment.
NWO — Dutch Research Council, Open Competition Domain Science-M (Netherlands)
American Chemical Society (ACS)
FNRS — The National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium)
AIP Publishing — American Institute of Physics
JOVE Methods Collection
Biosensors (IF 5.52)
Micromachines (IF 2.52)
ACS Nano Letters, Lab on a Chip, Scientific Reports, Applied Energy, Biosensors, and 40+ more SCI journals.
