Tao Sun

Tao Sun is a researcher with a multi-disciplinary scientific background, and more than eight years of R&D experience in MEMS, neural interface, flexible electronics, and biomaterials. Tao earned his bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China. After graduating, he continued his master’s degree at State Key Lab of Advanced Welding and Joining at HIT, to conduct research on composite coatings with multiple layered structure. Under the guidance of his supervisor at HIT, he was the first to fabricate a multilayered thin film on a stainless steel, using a plasma immersion ion implantation and deposition technique, and hence received the distinguished master’s thesis award of HIT .

After receiving his PhD from HKU in 2010, he joined the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), A*STAR, Singapore, as a research scientist (Scientist I, Scientist II), developing a stable and reliable neural interface to reduce the fibrous tissue encapsulation. He was trained in the world-class clean room (class 10 and 100) for traditional Si-based and novel polymer-based microfabrication process. The research team that he worked in is the first in the world to propose and successfully fabricate a bio-resolvable and hybrid porous silicon/parylene neural probe to reduce the host tissue response. He primarily contributed to the microfabrication and in vitro and in vivo evaluation for the project.

To obtain top academic training, he joined Prof. Canan Degdeviren’s group at the MIT Media Lab in July of 2018. In this encouraging and exciting environment, he wishes to devote himself to developing cutting-edge technologies in the areas of neural interface, flexible electronics, and MEMS.