MIE’s Yubing Sun Receives Seed Grant for Collaborative Research with Hokkaido University

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Yubing Sun, an associate professor in the UMass Amherst Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department and an adjunct in Biomedical Engineering, has obtained a grant from the UMass-Hokkaido University (HU) Joint Research Seed Funding Program 2025. The grant will support Sun’s collaboration with Dr. Toshiro Ohashi from the HU Faculty of Engineering on a project entitled “Broadening HU-UMass collaboration on cell mechanics,” which could lead to new biomaterials and medical devices for tissue regeneration. 

The connection between HU and UMass Amherst dates back more than 150 years to the time of their respective roots in the 19th century, when Dr. William Smith Clark, the third president of Massachusetts Agricultural College, cultivated a relationship with the fledgling Sapporo Agricultural College. See Hokkaido University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Collaborations | Hokkaido University.

The seed funding aims to support the development of new collaborations through organized research visits, collaborative meetings, workshops, and seminars. That process for Sun’s grant begins in early May, when Professors Ohashi and Ryota Toyohara of HU will visit the UMass campus. 

According to Sun, “Both professors plan to visit UMass on May 8th and 9th to meet with faculty members and students. They will give two seminar talks at 10 a.m. on May 9th in the N410 Life Sciences Laboratory, and there will be an opportunity for UMass students to meet with them at 4:00 p.m. on May 9th. Interested students can contact me for arrangements. Also, I will visit Hokkaido University in June.”

As Sun summarizes his joint research with HU, “We propose to build a new collaboration in the area of Applied Life Sciences based on our mutual interests in mechanical regulation of collective-cell migration.” 

The researchers expect that Ohashi’s expertise in micromechanical-device fabrication, bio-atomic-force microscopy, and deep-learning-based methods for imaging processing, together with Sun’s expertise in mechano-transduction and stem-cell bioengineering, will boost a host of new research innovations.

The background of this cooperative research is that cells respond to and regulate complex mechanical forces such as fluid shear stress and mechanical interactions between cells and the extra-cellular matrix. Understanding such regulatory mechanisms will guide the design of new biomaterials and medical devices for tissue regeneration. Both Ohashi and Sun have strong interests in this research topic, with dovetailing research, focus, and expertise. 

“Specifically,” says the project proposal, “Ohashi has developed a series of microfluidic and micromechanical devices for understanding how cells respond to fluidic flow, mechanical stress, and mechanical properties of substrates, with an emphasis on epithelial cells and cancer. His team also developed advanced computer-vision algorithms for imaging segmentation and cell-feature identification.”

As the proposal continues, “On the other hand, Dr. Sun’s Laboratory for Multiscale Bioengineering and Mechanobiology has strong expertise in pluripotent stem-cell differentiation and developing in vitro systems and assays to model neural development using stem-cell-based models.” 

Sun’s research, recently supported by an impressive $1.9-million National Institute of General Medical Sciences R35 Maximizing Investigators Research Award, is expanding into the mechanobiology of profound wound healing in epicardial tissues. 

“Sun’s team is particularly interested in using single-cell transcriptomics and proteomics to tease out the signaling pathways that are involved in collective cell migration during wound healing,” as the proposal explains. 

According to the proposal, “The micro-engineered tools developed in Ohashi’s lab will significantly expand the Sun lab’s capabilities in controlling cell microenvironment and data analysis, which are critical for understanding the physiologically relevant wound-healing processes. Sun’s lab’s expertise in stem-cell engineering and molecular biology will also contribute to Dr. Ohashi’s research by providing molecular insights into the mechano-transduction pathway involved.” (April 2025)