Microsystems and Nanoengineering Summit 2019 Shanghai, China (Part 1)
I had the opportunity to attend the Microsystems and Nanoengineering Summit 2019 (MINE 2019) in Shanghai, China on July 7 to July 10, 2019. I first want to take this opportunity to thank my professor, Professor Zhen Zhu for giving me the chance to attend, I am extremely grateful for this opportunity, and I have learned a lot. I will be releasing a three part summary of the summit itself, the speakers, and my experience.
For a bit of an introduction, MINE is an annual conference starting from 2015, where they wanted to begin their journal. Even though this journal is young, they have already grown to have an impact factor 5.91331, and I would recommend checking out their journal, as the research that is published on there is innovative, original, and challenging. This year, the conference was chaired by Xiaoming Xie the executive director of Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) and co-organized by SIMIT, Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), IECAS, Chinese Society of Micro-Nano Technology (CSMNT), and the Microsystems and Nanoengineering Journal. The venue was the Shanghai Institute of Micro Information Technologies, and it could not have been a better venue.
Among the invited professors, there was Professor Tianhong Cui, Professor Xinxin Li, Professor Yu Sun, and Professor Eric Yeatman who were the conference co-chairs, and lots more. Each professor was working on very novel research, and after attending this conference, I have come to realize that many of the ‘innovative products’ that we see today on the market were already pioneered in the field many years ago.
The First Day
July 8, 2019 was the first official date of the conference talks, and I woke up early at 7:30 AM to get ready for the talks. The day started off with an artistic flair, where the Violin Chief of Shanghai Oriental Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Yue Zhu and an associate professor from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Mr. Weijie Li, performed two pieces, “The Butterfly Lovers”, and also “Summer Night”. It was a unique opening to the summit and the music was greatly appreciated. Then the conference began with an introduction to SIMIT, the journal, and the background of the organization. There were many unique collaborations that were introduced, and I was very interested in the various collaborations on research around the world. The first speaker was Professor Yu Sun from the University of Toronto, and his research was on Mechanical Measurement inside a Cell and Deep in Tissue. This was extremely interesting to me, because using beads, and ultrasound mediated magnetic movement, the researchers were able to find unique mechanical properties inside cells. This can then be applied to cancer cells, where certain cancer cells have a different internal mechanical property compared to those of non-cancer inducing. And without looking at biomarkers, cancer cells can accurately be distinguished. This can also be applied to other types of cells and be used to find unique mechanical properties in the cells internal structure. The control mechanism for this system was an intricate GPC controller several sensors predicting the beads movement, position, and other variable signals. The second talk was done by Professor Chenzhong Li who was from the Nano-bioengineering/Bioelectronics Lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Florida International University. Professor Chenzhong Li’s talk was on the high throughput microelectrode arrays-based neuron on a chip for visualizing neuron-chemical activities. His talk focused on deriving an equivalent circuit model (ECM) for neural cells, which could then be used to study cell behavior, modality, mobility, growth, morphological changes, spreading, barrier functions, movements, and lots more. His research was extremely interesting, and he also went in depth on their analysis of the neuron cells, cell trap mechanism, and fabrication methods of the device. The third talk was from Professor Alexander Rezvin who works at Mayo Clinic which is the world’s largest clinic, and boasts over 1000 clinicians, as well as numerous staff each focusing on different research topics. Professor Alexander Rezvin’s talk was on Encapsulating Difficult-to-Culture Cells using Droplet Microfluidics. The research was inspired by lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices, and the need came from the need of spheroid formation with reproducible sizes, conserving expensive reagents, protecting cells against shear of mechanical stress/agitation, and immune-protection of islets and other cells after transportation. His research was extremely interesting, and I will be reading more on his research. After a quick coffee break, the talks resumed and this time it was Professor Tiger Tao, who presented the concept of utilizing silk as a material in micro and nanofabrication. Silk is biodegradable substance, and water can be used as a developer for this material, meaning that biosensors can be created with low environmental impact, and devices can be fabricated to fully integrate with other systems. For example, a drug patch for patients that require antibiotics delivered to them post surgery can be created, and the patch can fully integrate with the patient without showing any problems. This can be done through validation of the cell structures and properties around the wound, and since same cell properties were identified, it was concluded that the patch had fully dissolved and integrated. The research can also be used to protein lego, and this would mean that molecular shapes could be moulded using this technology. The next talk was by Professor Ian Papautsky and his talk was on Blood Microfluidics. His talk featured his research on label-free cell sorting. They developed a microfluidic platform capable of sorting cells for example circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that would be able to utilize different cell properties in a channel and sort them. The inspiration of the device was the coin sorting machines, as coin sorting machines utilize gravity and the coin size to sort coins, and a similar principle could be applied to cells. Through the analysis of CTCs, accurate cell parameters could be extracted and sorted from white blood cells (WBCs) and red blood cells (RBCs). The final talk for the morning was from Professor Tian-Ling Ren from Tsinghua University. His talk was about a graphene based electronic sensors. The sensors that their group worked on include bioinspired graphene pressure sensor which was inspired by the epidermis tissue structure creating graphene e-skin. Professor Tian-Ling Ren also went in depth on how they conducted their graphene preparation and fabrication process, which included laser scribing. Following this was lunch, and it was also time for more posters. I had the chance to speak with several of the young scientists that would be presenting after the lunch break and I learned a lot about their research. The first talk after lunch was by Dr. Hao Jia a PhD student from Case Western Reserve University. His research was on utilizing the Chaldni effect to enable fast, versatile, and non-invasive manipulation of cancer cells and clusters. The research also proved effective as they were able to prove that the metastatic breast cancer cell clustering is correlated to the biomarker CD44. The next speaker was Assistant Professor Peng Li from Tsinghua University who spoke about his research on single-crystalline graphene nanodevices. It was interesting hearing about the NEMS device they created for the use in detection of tumor markers. The next speaker was Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) Rui Yang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research was on a NEMS resonator developed with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) on flexible PDMS substrate for ultralow power sensing and signal processing. The goal for this research is to enable energy-efficient processing of large quantities of data in data-intensive computation. The next speaker was Assistant Professor Tao Wu from Shanghai Tech University who presented his research on strain-mediated MEMS transducers. His research included chip-scale RF wake-up receivers (WURs) and the design and implementation of CMOS-compatible monocentric silicon imagers. Then it was time for a coffee break and a poster session. I had the chance here to speak with several professors that would be presenting tomorrow, and Professor Daniel Beysens also introduced me to his book on dew droplet collection. After the break, Professor Jiamin Chen from the Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences who presented his research on high sensitivity magnetic sensor based on a spintronic device. Their sensor demonstrated high sensitivity, small size, low power consumption, and low price. This device could potentially be used in the automotive industry for numerous automobile data collection methods such as pressure, location, temperature, speed, engine control, failure detection, direction, etc. Next up was Professor Zhenyu Wu from SIMIT and his presentation was on Diamonds utilized in MEMS. Single crystal diamond (SCD) is an emerging material for MEMS and NEMS because of its long-lasting abilities, and nitrogen-vacancy color centers as a point defect in the lattice of diamond. His talk focused on how their group was able to use MEMS heterogeneous integration technology, combining SCD with glass and silicon on a small scale to develop a construction volume on the micrometer scale. The final talk of that day was by Professor Xi Xie from Sun Yat-Sen University who presented his research on micro/nano devices for Biomedical Applications. His research focused on three main things, in the in vitro cellular level: safe penetration of the cell membrane to regulate and sense intracellular contents dynamically, in the transdermal level: precise and in situ detection and therapy of diseases, and in the in vivo level: bio-safe implantable theragnostic systems for regulation and sensing of diseases. That evening, the MINE conference had a banquet at the New World Hotel in Shanghai, and there was a 13-course meal. I was very fortunate to be able to sit at a table that had students from around China, and it was very nice to be able to talk to them about what research they were doing, connect as students, and exchange my student experience as a Canadian. I was also the youngest one there, as most of the students were either in their final years as undergrads or as masters students or above.
Link to part 2: https://medium.com/@liryan914/microsystems-and-nanoengineering-summit-2019-shanghai-china-part-2-7359e1d84c29
