About

Shu Yang is a professor whose research focuses on the development of environmentally responsive and anisotropic materials, materials at surface and interface, geometric design and manufacturing of mechanical meta-materials, fiber-based materials, and materials for health and sustainability. His work involves multidisciplinary modeling, evaluation, and engineering of advanced materials, including liquid crystalline elastomers, hydrogel desiccants, and composite fibers, with applications spanning from atmospheric water harvesting and cooling to soft robotics and intelligent materials. Professor Yang has made significant contributions to the understanding and engineering of molecular orders at interfaces, scalable fabrication of functional materials, and bio-inspired design strategies, advancing the field of materials science and engineering.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Materials science
• Nanotechnology
• Composite material
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Optoelectronics
• Physics
• Simulation
• Mechanical engineering
• Optics
• Chemical engineering
• Organic chemistry
• Mathematics
• Aerospace engineering
• Geometry
• Geology
• Meteorology
• Chemistry
• Combinatorics
• Mechanics
• Environmental science
• Polymer chemistry
• Acoustics

Selected publications

• Programming touch-me-not knot topologies for rapid and diverse leaping and flying motions

  Science · 2026-04-23

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Miniature leaping robots are desired to perform fast, programmable, and versatile motions. In this study, we present our approach for harnessing the impulsive unknotting process triggered upon heating millimeter-sized knots made from Kevlar-reinforced liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) composite fibers. The LCE shell with twisted mesogens undergoes torsional deformation, generating an actuation force that overcomes friction, converting the stored elastic energy into kinetic energy for launching tall and rapid leaps with diverse posttakeoff motions depending on the knot topology. By manipulating the bending-twisting coupling and the unknotting numbers, we realize flipping, spinning, and sequential gymnastic in-air motions. We further program posttakeoff flight, including self-return and vertical descent by integrating a wing. Encoding topology and anisotropy provides a rich design space to program soft robots for rapid, agile, and highly efficient motions.

  PublisherDOI

• Elephant‐Skin‐Inspired Porous Cementitious Tiles with Programmable Crack Networks for Passive Cooling

  Advanced Materials · 2026-04-20

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Passive evaporation of water reduces a building's cooling energy demand. However, water is often wasted due to rebound, uneven spreading, and rapid drainage. Here, we present an elephant-skin-inspired crack network architecture in porous diatomaceous earth (DE)-cement composites to capture, route, and store water with minimal runoff. DE's micro/nanoporosity enables ultrafast (sub-50 ms) water imbibition, while crack networks act as capillary conduits that redistribute water across and up inclined surfaces. Substrate-guided stress concentration converts drying-induced stochastic fractures into deterministic crack lattices that route and retain water on inclined surfaces, enabling geometry-tunable, water-efficient evaporative cooling. Tiles of hexagonal lattices with intermediate crack density maximize lateral redistribution and delay drainage. Infrared imaging reveals edge-dominated evaporation, sustaining prolonged cooling. In a mockup home model covered with DE-cement tiles, under repeated water dosing and IR heating, the temperature beneath the DE-cement tiles is maintained at ∼32°C vs ∼42°C and ∼52°C for cracked and non-cracked commercial stucco, respectively. The study offers a simple, scalable route for passive cooling.

  PublisherDOI

• Elastomeric Micro‐Balloons for Remote Control of Cerebral Blood Flow and Real‐Time In vivo Imaging of Rodent Brain Response to Hypoperfusion

  Advanced Materials · 2026-04-21

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Current preclinical models of ischemic stroke in mice do not permit simultaneous and continuous in vivo brain imaging during the peri-stroke period, therefore missing critical pathophysiological events that could be pivotal for stroke management at early stages. Here, we report the fabrication of micro-balloons using yield-stress fluids, in which the monolithic elastomeric wall has selectively stiffened regions for controlled inflation and elasticity, depending on the target vessels. A multi-step bubble-casting process successfully creates an inner layer in a channel with a diameter of <300 µm, despite the yield stress defying surface-tension-induced instability. The micro-balloon can expand up to four times its initial diameter, enabling remote control of the blood flow in cerebral arteries in live mice. By allowing continuous control of the common carotid artery diameter across different states to induce stroke in a precise, reliable, and reversible manner, the micro-balloon recapitulates clinically relevant hemodynamics in a mouse model of global brain ischemia, as evidenced by real-time intravital microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging. The presented micro-balloons hold significant potential to improve the treatment of stroke patients through minimally invasive interventions and in vivo imaging of pathophysiological events during the peri-stroke phase.

  PublisherDOI

• AggreBots: configuring CiliaBots through guided, modular tissue aggregation

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-02-27

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Ciliated biobots, or CiliaBots, are a class of engineered multicellular tissues that are capable of self-actuated motility propelled by the motile cilia located on their exterior surface. Correlations have been observed between CiliaBot motility patterns and their morphology and cilia distribution. However, precise control of these structural parameters to generate desired motility patterns predictably remains lacking. Here, we developed a novel Aggregated CiliaBot (AggreBot) platform capable of producing designer motility patterns through spatially controlled aggregation of epithelial spheroids made from human airway cells (referred to as CiliaBot Building Blocks or CBBs), yielding AggreBots with configurable geometry and distribution of active cilia. Guided multi-CBB aggregation led to the production of rod-, triangle-, and diamond-shaped AggreBots, which consistently effected greater motility than traditional single-spheroid CiliaBots. Furthermore, CBBs were found to maintain internal boundaries post-aggregation through the combined action of pathways controlling cellular fluidity and tissue polarity. This boundary fidelity, combined with the use of CBBs with immotile cilia due to mutations in the CCDC39 gene, allowed for the generation of hybrid AggreBots with precision control over the coverage and distribution of active cilia, further empowering control of motility patterns. Our results demonstrate the potential of AggreBots as self-propelling biological tissues through the establishment of morphological “levers” by which alterations to tissue motility can be theoretically planned and experimentally verified.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Starfish-inspired tube feet for temporary and switchable underwater adhesion and transportation

  Science Advances · 2025-07-23 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Temporary and reversible underwater adhesion is important for a number of robotic applications, including picking up objects, facilitating locomotion in confined environments, and attaching to surfaces during periods of observation. Here, we present a starfish-inspired tube foot composed of a soft hydrogel mouth and a rigid stem, fabricated by integrating two serially bonded cylindrical components with distinct mechanical properties. Upon swelling, the initially straight hydrogel cylinder undergoes a selective shape transformation into a soft, cupped pad that deforms to stretch and spread upon contact, enabling effective adhesion to target surfaces. During detachment, a vacuum is formed within the tube, leading to strong underwater adhesion. The artificial tube feet show high adhesion hysteresis, autonomous release by external stimuli, and immediate detachment by pneumatic actuation with integrated system. The temporary underwater adhesive inspired by the tube feet of starfish enables functionality in underwater robotics and is demonstrated through underwater manipulation of rocks.

  PublisherDOI

• Mechanophysical Synthesis of Core/Shell Hybrid Supraparticles (Adv. Mater. 28/2025)

  Advanced Materials · 2025-07-01

  articleOpen access

  Mechanophysical Synthesis of Supraparticles In article number 2502718, Seunggun Yu, Dong Woog Lee, Seung-Yeol Jeon, Shu Yang, and co-workers report a dry-state synthesis strategy of core/shell hybrid supraparticles inspired by asteroid impacts. Utilizing high-energy collisions between soft polymer microspheres and hard inorganic nanoparticles, the study establishes a scalable, solvent-free route for mechanophysical assembly of diverse functional materials.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Open-world surgical video generation via dual-visual diffusion and dual-annealed generation

  Neural Networks · 2025-11-03

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Flexible pyroelectric energy harvesters from nanocomposites of liquid crystal elastomers/lead zirconate titanate nanoparticles

  Science Advances · 2025-02-12 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Pyroelectric materials that can generate electric charges when subjected to temperature changes are of interest for renewable energy. However, current flexible pyroelectric energy harvesters suffer from low output. Here, we present a nanocomposite of liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE) and pyroelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) nanoparticles and demonstrate a flexible heat harvesting device with high output. The overall pyroelectricity is enhanced by the secondary pyroelectricity generated from the thermal stress imposed on the LCE. Calculations and simulations corroborate with experiments, suggesting that the monodomain LCE/PZT with fixed boundaries offers the most enhancement. At a maximum heating rate of 0.20 kelvin per second, the fixed monodomain film (42.7 weight % PZT) shows an output current of 2.81 nanoamperes and a voltage of 6.23 volts, corresponding to a pyroelectric coefficient p of −4.01 nanocoulombs per square centimeter per kelvin, 49% higher than that of the widely used polyvinylidene fluoride. Our energy harvester can charge capacitors and power electronic devices such as light-emitting diodes.

  PublisherDOI

• Chemical Construction of Molecular Truss Lattices with Tunable Topologies

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025-10-06 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Engineering connectivity at the nanoscale enables unprecedented mechanical metamaterials with exotic properties. However, nanomanufacturing 3D lattices with molecular connectivity and tunable topologies is challenging. Here, we select a supramolecular material named metal–organic framework (MOF) as the prototype, where molecules are employed as nodes and beams to construct nanosized truss lattices. An MOF named PCN-700 featuring a well-defined body-centered cubic structure is synthesized, of which the molecular connectivity, topology, and internal stress can be precisely tuned via postsynthetic installation of organic linkers with variable lengths. Herein, the topology is regulated with subnanometer resolution, affording lightweight materials with tunable elastic moduli (8.9–17.4 GPa) without apparent density changes, confirmed by atomic force microscopy indentation. The study of the compressive behaviors from nanonewton to millinewton regimes establishes a connection between the intrinsic chemical structures and the mechanical properties, where the molecular connectivity determines the lattice deformation mode. Raman spectra and ab initio calculations indicate that the PCN-700 can accommodate compressive deformation through the rotation of molecular planes within the organic ligands, contributing to the integral stiffness. The insights presented here will not only uncover MOFs’ application potentials in mechanics but also inspire chemical design and precision engineering of mechanical metamaterials at the nanoscale.

  PublisherDOI

• Regulating oxygen vacancy of perovskites via A-site substitution to promote activity for photocatalytic HCHO oxidation under visible light

  Separation and Purification Technology · 2025-06-08 · 5 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• EAGER/Collaborative Research: Environmentally Responsive, Water Harvesting and Self-Cooling Building Envelopes

  NSF · $165k · 2017–2020

• CAREER: Selective Grafting of Responsive Polymer Brushes on Topographically Structured Surfaces: A New Route for Surface and Interface Manipulation

  NSF · $456k · 2006–2011

• EFRI-SEED: Energy Minimization via Multi-Scaler Architectures From Cell Contractility to Sensing Materials to Adaptive Building Skins

  NSF · $2.1M · 2010–2014

• From a Single Micropatterned Elastic Membrane to a Library of Complex Patterns of Nanostructures: an Efficient Nanomanufacturing Route via Harnessing of Elastic Instability

  NSF · $410k · 2009–2013

• Design, synthesis, and assembly of composite liquid crystal elastomer fibers

  NSF · $463k · 2021–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Dengteng Ge

  60 shared

• Elaine Lee

  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

  40 shared

• Guanyun Wang

  39 shared

• Teng Zhang

  Tsinghua University

  38 shared

• Danli Luo

  University of Washington

  38 shared

• Andreea Danielescu

  Accenture (United States)

  38 shared

• Lili Yang

  Donghua University

  38 shared

• Jiaji Li

  38 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Materials Science and Engineering

  University of Pennsylvania

  2005

• M.S., Materials Science and Engineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  2000

• B.S., Materials Science and Engineering

  University of Science and Technology of China

  1997