Prof. Xuanhe Zhao

Xuanhe Zhao received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Harvard University in 2009, MS in Materials Engineering from University of British Columbia in 2006, and BE in Electrical Engineering from Tianjin University in 2003. Upon finishing a postdoctoral training in Biomedical Engineering at Harvard, in 2010, Dr. Zhao joint the faculty of Duke University and founded the Soft Active Materials Laboratory. In 2014, Dr. Zhao and his group moved to Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, where he is a joint professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Zhao is a recipient of NSF Career Award (2012), the Early Career Researcher Award by the AVS Biomaterial Interface Division (2012), the ONR Young Investigator Award (2014), the SES Young Investigator Medal (2017), the Adhesion Society’s Young Scientist Award (2017), and several best paper awards. He held the Hunt Faculty Scholar at Duke and d'Arbeloff Career Development Chair and Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor at MIT.

Dr. Zhao’s current research goal is to understand and design soft materials that possess unprecedented properties and functions. His research has led to the design of extremely tough adhesive and biocompatible hydrogels and hydrogel-solid hybrids, discovery of new failure mechanisms in dielectric polymers, and controlled crumpling and unfolding of large-area 2D materials into functional nanostructures.