Yun Chen

Yun Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University's Whiting School of Engineering. Her research focuses on mechanobiology, developing biophysical tools to study disease mechanisms and clinical applications. Key areas include cancer imaging, quantum biotechnology, and biomaterials. She leads a lab with patents and industrial collaborations, and her work has been published in top journals like Nature Physics. Awards include NSF and NIH Trailblazer Awards and a DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Education: PhD in Biomedical Engineering from UNC Chapel Hill, specializing in multi-scale imaging of biophysical and biochemical behaviors. Her lab integrates engineering principles with biology, aiming to expand into quantum mechanics for cell studies.

Research emphasizes understanding how altered biophysics contributes to diseases, with projects on cancer cell migration, fluid viscosity sensing, and tissue engineering. Collaborations include developing treatments and diagnostic tools. Students advised include Junjie Chen, whose work on magnetosensitive proteins was highlighted at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.