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Biography

Micro-/Nanorobotics × Biomedical Engineering × AI

Zongcai Tan is a fully funded PhD student in Bioengineering at Imperial College London, supervised by Dr. Dandan Zhang. He received his MRes degree with Distinction from Imperial College London and his BEng degree with First Class Honours from Jilin University.

His publications include papers in ICRA, MARSS, Cyborg and Bionic Systems, IJCARS, etc. His selected honours include the National Scholarship, the President Scholarship at Jilin University, Huawei Scholarship and the Amazon PhD Prize runner-up recognition.

Collaboration

Open discussion

I warmly welcome researchers and colleagues from biomedical research, robotics, embodied intelligence, and AI-enabled control to connect and explore how robotics and AI may help transform future healthcare.

If our interests overlap, please feel free to contact me by email, LinkedIn, or WeChat.

Research Interests

Core themes

Microrobotic system development and automated control

Machine learning for robotics

Biomedical applications of micro-/nanorobots

News

Recent updates
May 2026

Our review on embodied cross-domain intelligence in biomedical microrobots was accepted by Cyborg and Bionic Systems.

May 2026

Our paper on digital-twin-driven haptic teleoperation of optical microrobots was accepted by IEEE MARSS 2026.

Apr 2026

Runner-up, Amazon PhD Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Robotics.

Jan 2026

Our paper on physics-informed sim-to-real data augmentation was accepted by ICRA 2026.

Oct 2025

Started PhD research in Bioengineering at Imperial College London.

Publications

Selected work

Embodied Cross-Domain Intelligence in Biomedical Microrobots: A Review

Zongcai Tan, Lan Wei, Kangyi Lu, Dandan Zhang

Cyborg and Bionic Systems, 2026

Digital Twin-Driven Haptic Teleoperation Framework for Complex-Shaped Microrobots Actuated by Optical Tweezers

Zongcai Tan, Lan Wei, Dandan Zhang

IEEE MARSS 2026

Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Efficient Sim-to-Real Data Augmentation in Micro-Object Pose Estimation

Zongcai Tan*, Lan Wei*, Dandan Zhang

ICRA 2026

Interactive OT Gym: A Reinforcement Learning-Based Interactive Optical Tweezer-Driven Microrobotics Simulation Platform

Zongcai Tan, Dandan Zhang

ICRA 2025

Contact

Get in touch
CollaborationBiomedical research, robotics, embodied intelligence, and AI-enabled control.