Biography

Professor Koji Ikuta received his first B.S. in Material Science and Engineering, and his second B.S. and M.S. in Biophysical Engineering in 1977,1979 and 1981 respectively from Osaka University. He received a Ph.D in Control Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1987. He joined the Center for Robotic Systems in Microelectronics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1987. He was an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo and an associate professor at Kyusyu Institute of Technology. He moved to Nagoya University as a full professor at the new department of micro/nano system engineering in 1994. He moved to the University of Tokyo to upgrade his research from 2010. He is holding joint appointment of Osaka University as an outstanding professor to organize research of biomedical MEMS for next generation. He has organized EEE MEMS’94 as a General Chair and the steering committee of MEMS from 1992. He was awarded more than 40 academic prizes for his outstanding research in biomedical micro machines (Bio-MEMS) and medical robotics from government and academic societies such as the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) and several foundations. Outstanding Researcher Prize from Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan, The Achievement award from American Association on Laboratory Automation and Best paper award from Japan Society of Robots etc. He received a Purple Medal from Japanese Emperor in 2010. Recently he serves an international advisory board of Science Robotics.

Abstract

We have been developing new micro chemical device named “Chemical IC chip” for these twenty years. The chemical IC chip concept was proposed by Prof. Koji Ikuta in 1996 at the Artificial Life Conference V published from MIT press. The chemical IC chips has various unique features such as modular device chip concept , 3D micro fluidics and versatility for many applications in biomedicine.

Recently new micro device composed by several chemical IC chips to detect the micro-RNA from cancer cell was developed. This micro device enables us to detect the cancer at earlier stage than conventional cancer marker using protein distributed from cancer. The latest version of micro-RNA detection devices is finger size and low cost.

Our newly developed 3D nano fabrication has been opening the Tissue Engineering micro chips. The advanced biochemical IC chip-set for “on chip cell-free protein synthesis” and “Proteomic device” to analyze protein of the cells were developed. And poison-free process was found to utilize commercial photo curable polymers for cell level biocompatible device.