It's a Small World After All
At the nexus of robotics, biology and medical devices, this session examines the importance of microrobots in the medical world to improve the state of the world. An exciting new and promising field.
Live Panel Discussion
Wednesday, 8 September 2021
18:00 - 19:00 (CET)
Simone Schürle-Finke, Responsive Biomedical Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
external pageHakan Ceylan, Physical Intelligence, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Introduced and moderated by
Chris Luebkeman, Strategic Foresight Hub, ETH Zurich
The impact of vaccines in response to the corona virus poignantly demonstrated the importance of the role of the medical world in our lives. Pushing the boundaries of what medicine can accomplish holds huge potential in improving the state of the world.
Imagine you could shrink robots to the size of a cell and inject them into your body to help deliver drugs or target tumors. Sounds like science fiction? In this session, we hear about the potential of soft-bodied, wireless, miniature robots in the context of drug delivery, stem-cell treatment, and other medical functions. We also learn how synthetic biology is repurposing bacteria as living microrobots in the fight against cancer, among other applications.
Simone Schürle-Finke researchs in the field of biomedical engineering and is Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) for Responsive Biomedical Systems at ETH Zurich. She graduated in 2009 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Industrial Engineering and Management (Dipl. Wi.-Ing.) with specialization in micro/nanosystems. During her studies, she researched at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, about automated drug infusion and control, and at the University of Kyoto, Japan, in the field of carbon nanotube based nanosensors. She then joined the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) where she focused on magnetic manipulation techniques for biomedical applications. She was awarded with the ETH medal for her doctoral thesis and with fellowships from the SNSF, DAAD and the Society in Science for her postdoctoral studies at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was researching as postdoctoral fellow from 2014-2017. Besides activities in public outreach work and education, she is serving as Global Future Council for the World Economic Forum. She is also co-founder of MagnebotiX, a young spin-off from ETHZ.
Hakan Ceylan develops microscopic (< 100 μm) healthcare technologies of the future by working at the interfaces of engineering, life sciences and medicine.
He designs, synthesizes and engineers biological and bioinspired materials to understand ways of creating physical (or embodied) intelligence at the microscopic length scales having the capabilities of integrated mobility, sensing and response- the three pillars of robotics. Using this approach, he aspires to realize untethered softmicrorobots that exhibit programmed intelligence for minimally invasive targeted therapies.
His inventions around these tides have resulted in three international patents and over twenty publications in the top peer-reviewed journals. He has received Günter Petzow Prize, several best paper, best talk and science-as-art awards as an extension of his research output. His studies have been publicized by a Bayern2 radio podcast, PC Magazine and a number of other printed and web-based German and international media. In 2019, PC Magazine featured my medical microrobot project among “5 amazing projects that will change the future of healthcare”.