Huang Receives 2019 IEEE Technical Achievement Award

Tony Jun Huang, the William Bevan Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Science, has been selected to receive the 2019 EMBS Technical Achievement Award “for his pioneering work on developing acoustic tweezers, which are capable of precisely manipulating bioparticles across a broad size range in complex fluids, enabling many applications in biomedical research.”

This award is given annually to an individual “to recognize an individual(s) for outstanding achievement, contribution(s), and/or innovation in a technical area of biomedical engineering” by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the world’s largest international society of biomedical engineers. It consists of a $1,500 honorarium and reimbursement of up to $1,500 for travel, registration and accommodation expenses to attend the awards presentation ceremony to be held during the opening ceremony of EMBC’19.

A leader in the fields of microfluidics, acoustofluidics and lab-on-a-chip technologies, Huang explores ways of using sound waves to precisely manipulate and detect fluids and particles—such as cells, DNAs, RNAs and proteins—inside fluids. His goal is to develop these technologies into new diagnoses and treatments for various diseases. Some of his recent work includes developing an acoustic microfluidic platform that can gently and quickly separate circulating tumor cells from blood samples, a technique that uses soundwaves and oil to avoid contamination for reusable lab-on-a-chip devices, and an acoustic whirlpool device that effectively concentrates nanoparticles to gather proteins and other biological structures from blood, urine or saliva samples for future diagnostic devices.

Huang’s other recent awards include the Analytical Chemistry 2017 Young Innovator Award, the 2014 IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award, the 2012 Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from Society for Manufacturing Engineering, the 2011 JALA Top Ten Breakthroughs of the Year Award, and the 2010 National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award.