MAE Distinguished Speaker Series 2026 Seminar on Soft-bodied Implantable Miniature Medical Robots

06 Jul 2026 02.30 PM - 04.00 PM LT8 (North Spine, NS1-02-01) Current Students, Public

Seminar Recording_Prof Metin Sitti

Professor Metin Sitti

President

Koç University, Turkey

This seminar will be chaired by Assoc Prof Lum Guo Zhan.

Seminar Abstract

Wireless miniature medical robots have the unique capability of navigating, operating, and staying inside hard-to-reach, tight and risky sites inside our body. This talk reports on our group’s recent soft-bodied miniature medical robots that could navigate in confined spaces inside our body to achieve various medical functions, such as stroke/aneurysm treatment, local active drug delivery, liquid biopsy, tumor treatment, fluid pumping, and cauterization/hyperthermia. Due to miniaturization limitations on on-board actuation, powering, sensing, computing, and communication, new methods need to be introduced in creating and controlling such robots. Moreover, they need to be tracked under medical imaging modalities, such as ultrasound and fluoroscopy, for their precise and safe operation and control. 3D microprinting fabrication methods and multifunctional soft materials are proposed to create novel soft medical millirobots. Soft-body design enables active shape programming-based adaptive, reconfigurable and multimodal navigation, diverse functions and safe operation. Here, external magnetic fields or gradients are used to actuate and steer such miniature robot bodies with complex magnetic programming. We have recently shown in-situ reprogramming capability of such soft magnetic medical robots using multimodal actuation. Moreover, electrical stimulation is also recently used as an alternative soft actuation method for hydrogel-based 3D-printed hydrogel ciliary actuator designs to effectively pump fluids and transport objects, like biological cilia. These implantable wireless medical robots would drastically decrease the invasiveness and increase the treatment and diagnostic functionality, efficacy, and accessibility of current medical robots inside the body.

 

Speaker's Biography 

Metin Sitti

Prof. Dr. Metin Sitti is the President and Professor of Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey since fall 2023. Formerly, he was a Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany (2014-2023), Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2020-2024), Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA (2002-2014), and Research Scientist at UC Berkeley, USA (1999-2002). He received his BSc (1992) and MSc (1994) degrees from Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and PhD degree from University of Tokyo, Japan (1999). His research interests include wireless medical devices, small-scale mobile robots, bioinspiration, and physical intelligence. He is a member of National Academy of Engineering (USA), Academy Europea, and Max Planck Society. He received the Highly Cited Researcher recognition (since 2021), Frontiers of Science Award (2025), Materials Science Leader Award (since 2023), Breakthrough of the Year Award in the Falling Walls World Science Summit (2020), ERC Advanced Grant (2019), Rahmi Koç Science Medal (2018), SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award (2011), and NSF CAREER Award (2005). He has supervised and mentored over 70 (15 current) PhD students and 80 (8 current) postdocs, where over 65 of his group alumni are professors around the world. He has published 2 books and over 450 journal articles and has issued over 30 patents. He founded Setex Technologies Inc. to commercialize his lab’s gecko-inspired microfiber adhesive technology. He is the editor-in-chief of Journal of Micro-Bio Robotics journal and associate editor in Science Advances journal.

 

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