Aisinjioro-Soo Distinguished Lecture features Toner of Harvard Medical School

Professor Mehmet Toner was the honored speaker at the Fall 2026 Yunchuan Aisinjioro-Soo Distinguished Lecture, held October 27 in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Auditorium.

Toner is the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Mass General Brigham, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard–MIT Health Sciences and Technology. He serves as Director of Research at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Boston and is Co-Director of the Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery.

He received his BS degree from Istanbul Technical University and his MS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in mechanical engineering. He subsequently earned his PhD in medical engineering from the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

“Scaling the Microscale: The Rise of Extreme Microfluidics” abstract: Microfluidics has traditionally enabled precise manipulation of minute fluid volumes, but its broader application has been constrained by limited throughput and the complexity of real-world biological fluids. Here, we introduce “extreme microfluidics,” extending microscale principles to process large volumes of complex, non-Newtonian fluids such as whole blood while preserving precision and gentle handling of living cells. We highlight key innovations leveraging multiplexing, inertial and viscoelastic effects, and integrated multi-physics platforms to enable high-throughput separation and manipulation of rare cells. These advances include both positive selection and label-free negative depletion strategies, as well as inertial focusing approaches that allow continuous, high-speed control of particles without external forces. Scalable parallelization and non-equilibrium processing further enable clinically relevant throughput and efficient isolation of rare single cells and multicellular clusters under physiologically gentle conditions. Together, these developments bridge microscale precision with macroscale processing, establishing extreme microfluidics as a powerful platform for applications in diagnostics, cell therapy, and large-scale bioprocessing.

The Yunchuan Aisinjioro-Soo Distinguished Lecture was established in 1992 by Professor Shao Lee Soo and his wife, Hermia. Professor and Mrs. Soo sought to perpetuate the memory of his mother, Yunchuan Aisinjioro-Soo (1899-1991). Born Princess Shansji of Aisinjioro, the last Royal House of China, she took the pen name Yunchuan and became an accomplished poet and artist. Throughout the turmoil of revolution and war, she steadfastly believed that the way for the family to serve the people is through the education of its children.

One of the Soos’ three children – Shirley Soo – attended the lecture and following reception.