He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Xi’an University of Technology (XUT) in 1989 and 1992, respectively. He became a Research Associate in 1992, a Lecturer in 1995, and an Associate Professor in 1998 at XUT, where he has served as the head of the Department of Mechatronics Engineering from 1997 to 1999. He received his Ph.D. degree in Micro Systems Engineering from Nagoya University in 2003, and became Assistant Professor at Nagoya University in 2003. In 2004 he joined Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich as a Research Scientist, and has been a Senior Research Scientist at ETH Zurich from 2005 to 2008, where he led the NanoRobotics Group in the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS).