About me

I am an incoming tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, starting in January 2027, where I will also be part of UTK’s Foundational AI Cluster. I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate in the Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio Group — at Yale University through mid-2026 and continuing at Princeton University (2026–2027). I completed my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in the Alex Chortos Group at Purdue University.

My future lab will focus on building intelligent, bio-inspired soft robotic systems by combining embodied AI, physics-informed AI, mechanical intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and flexible electronics. More specifically, I aim to develop soft robots with co-intelligence at both the body and brain levels: a body that can actively morph, sense, and adapt through smart structures and integrated electronics, and a brain that can learn, control, and make decisions through AI by leveraging the intelligence of the body. My work spans machine learning, shape morphing, soft and bio-inspired robotics, amphibious locomotion, wearable sensing, bioreactors, 3D printing, and flexible electronics, and has appeared in journals such as Nature Reviews Materials, Science Advances, Nature Communications, Advanced Intelligent Systems, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and IEEE Transactions on Robotics, with work under review at Science Robotics, Nature Machine Intelligence, and Nature Sensors.

Prospective students: I am recruiting PhD students and welcome motivated undergraduate and master’s researchers to join my lab at UTK starting in 2027. If you are excited about soft robotics, embodied/physics-informed AI, or bio-inspired systems, please feel free to reach out.

Research Highlights