Design, Synthesis, Control, and Tracking of Soft Magnetic Microrobots for Targeted Therapeutic Delivery
Attendance Link: https://tinyurl.com/robotsem-fall-2025
Effective delivery of therapeutics remains a central challenge in medicine, particularly when interventions must navigate complex and dynamic biological environments. Magnetic microrobots offer a promising solution, providing untethered locomotion and the ability to actively steer toward target sites. Among actuation strategies, rotational magnetic fields provide scalable torque-based propulsion, enabling continuous motion and agile navigation even under physiologically relevant flow conditions. In this presentation, I will highlight two complementary microrobotic platforms. Biohybrid microrobots based on bacteria combine autonomous chemotactic sensing with external torque-based control, allowing them to navigate tissues while maintaining responsiveness to applied magnetic fields. Synthetic bioinspired microrobots, constructed from biodegradable hydrogels with anisotropic magnetic nanoparticle patterns, exploit torque-driven propulsion to achieve efficient transport and directional control in vascular models and other constrained environments. To further improve targeting, I will introduce a strategy for spatially restricting rotating magnetic fields, focusing torque delivery to specific regions to enhance precision and reduce off-target effects. Complementing this, we integrate inductive feedback for real-time tracking, capturing magnetic phase lag and swarm synchronization to enable closed-loop control of microrobotic motion and collective behavior. Together, these advances—from torque-driven actuation and programmable magnetic design to spatially focused control and real-time feedback—demonstrate a versatile, scalable approach for microscale robotic systems in targeted therapeutics, paving the way toward clinical translation.
Bio: Simone Schuerle is Associate Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she heads the Medical System Lab. With her team, she develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano- and microscale with the aim of tackling a range of challenging problems in medicine. Prior to taking this position, she researched as postdoctoral scientist at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT on nanosensors for in vivo tumor profiling as well as methods to wirelessly enhance drug transport (2014–2017). She is recipient of several awards, such as the Ernst Th. Jucker Prize for Cancer Research, the Prix Zonta for Women in Science, and fellowships from the SNSF, DAAD, and Branco Weiss Foundation, and was honored with the distinction of “Young Scientist” by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2017. In 2014, she co-founded the spin-off MagnebotiX that offers electromagnetic control systems for wireless micromanipulation. She earned her PhD degree with specialization in microrobotics in 2013 at ETH Zurich, for which she was awarded the ETH Medal.
Please visit https://stanfordasl.github.io/robotics_seminar/ for this quarter’s lineup of speakers. Although we encourage live in-person attendance, recordings of talks will be posted also.
Covid-19 related instructions: We recommend wearing a well-fitted, high-quality face covering inside the classroom.
If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join Yang for lunch at Blend Cafe at 12 PM.