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About

Yanan Du is a multidisciplinary researcher whose work spans biomedical engineering, high-throughput drug screening, and construction robotics. Most prominently, Du has made significant contributions to the development of three-dimensional cell culture platforms for pharmaceutical applications, pioneering accessible microengineered tools that bridge the gap between conventional planar drug testing and more physiologically relevant 3D models. Their landmark 2013 paper on micro-scaffold array chips (94 citations) demonstrated how benchtop equipment could enable 3D high-throughput drug screening, democratizing a process previously dependent on costly robotic infrastructure. Building on this, Du extended the approach to multiplex immunoassay platforms for hepatotoxicity evaluation, advancing liver safety testing in drug development pipelines. More recently, Du has explored mechanogenetics as a noninvasive cancer therapy strategy, harnessing robotic actuation to trigger targeted cellular mechanotransduction signals without the side effects associated with conventional ultrasound-based physiotherapy. Alongside these biomedical innovations, Du has contributed to construction automation research, reviewing and advancing robotic floor-tiling systems. This breadth of research reflects a distinctive engineering sensibility — applying precision fabrication and actuation principles across both biomedical and built-environment challenges.