Xuanhe Zhao

About

Xuanhe Zhao is a professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering (by courtesy) at MIT. His research focuses on soft materials and systems, including tough adhesive hydrogels, hard-magnetic soft materials, wearable ultrasound, bioelectronics, and soft medical robotics. He also studies solid mechanics topics such as large deformation, instability, fracture, fatigue, adhesion, and multiple-field coupling, with an emphasis on societal impacts related to health, sustainability, water, food, energy, and plastics. Zhao's lab at MIT aims to advance science and technology at the interface of humans and machines to address grand societal challenges. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. from Harvard University, a M.Sc. from the University of British Columbia, and a B.E. from Tianjin University. Zhao has received numerous honors and awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, SES Young Investigator Medal, and the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher designation. His work has led to innovations such as bioadhesive ultrasound devices and adhesive coatings that prevent scarring around medical implants, with some of his lab's inventions recognized among TIME's Best Inventions of 2022 and awarded the Nature Spinoff Prize in 2023. Zhao holds multiple patents licensed by companies and contributing to FDA-approved medical devices. He has also held faculty positions at Duke University and MIT, and serves on various editorial boards and professional…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Nanotechnology
• Materials science
• Engineering
• Composite material
• Artificial Intelligence
• Systems engineering
• Business
• Acoustics
• Mechanical engineering

Selected publications

• Technology Roadmap for Flexible Sensors

  ACS Nano · 2023 · 1225 citations

  Humans rely increasingly on sensors to address grand challenges and to improve quality of life in the era of digitalization and big data. For ubiquitous sensing, flexible sensors are developed to overcome the limitations of conventional rigid counterparts. Despite rapid advancement in bench-side research over the last decade, the market adoption of flexible sensors remains limited. To ease and to expedite their deployment, here, we identify bottlenecks hindering the maturation of flexible sensor…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Soft Materials by Design: Unconventional Polymer Networks Give Extreme Properties

  Chemical Reviews · 2021 · 1051 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  , and (iii) future directions for the orthogonal design of hydrogels to achieve multiple combined mechanical, physical, chemical, and biological properties. Because these design principles and implementation strategies are based on generic polymer networks, they are also applicable to other soft materials including elastomers and organogels. Overall, the review will not only provide comprehensive and systematic guidelines on the rational design of soft materials, but also provoke interdisciplina…

  DOI

• Hydrogel machines

  Materials Today · 2020 · 978 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• 3D printing of conducting polymers

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 959 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Conducting polymers are promising material candidates in diverse applications including energy storage, flexible electronics, and bioelectronics. However, the fabrication of conducting polymers has mostly relied on conventional approaches such as ink-jet printing, screen printing, and electron-beam lithography, whose limitations have hampered rapid innovations and broad applications of conducting polymers. Here we introduce a high-performance 3D printable conducting polymer ink based on poly(3,4…

  DOI

• Adaptive and multifunctional hydrogel hybrid probes for long-term sensing and modulation of neural activity

  Nature Communications · 2021 · 290 citations

  To understand the underlying mechanisms of progressive neurophysiological phenomena, neural interfaces should interact bi-directionally with brain circuits over extended periods of time. However, such interfaces remain limited by the foreign body response that stems from the chemo-mechanical mismatch between the probes and the neural tissues. To address this challenge, we developed a multifunctional sensing and actuation platform consisting of multimaterial fibers intimately integrated within a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Transformative Skin: Controlled Electromechanical Instability on Polymer Surfaces

  NSF · $376k · 2012–2014

• EFRI C3 SoRo: Functional-Domain Soft Robots Precisely Controlled by Quantitative Dynamic Models and Data

  NSF · $2.0M · 2019–2024

• CAREER: Electroactive Graphene-Polymer System with Extreme Actuation and Tunable Properties

  NSF · $400k · 2013–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Enrique Herrera‐Viedma

  Universidad de Granada

  571 shared

• Fei‐Yue Wang

  University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

  405 shared

• Yu Kang

  388 shared

• K Seow

  Royal Adelaide Hospital

  388 shared

• Giuseppe Nicosia

  388 shared

• Winston H. Hsu

  388 shared

• Maria Pia Fanti

  Polytechnic University of Bari

  388 shared

• Ieee Officers

  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

  388 shared

Labs

• Zhao LabPI

Awards & honors

• Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professorship, MIT (07/2024)
• Highly Cited Researcher 2023, Clarivate (11/2023)
• Nature Spinoff Prize (for SanaHeal), Nature (06/2023)
• Highly Cited Researcher 2022, Clarivate (11/2022)
• TIME Best Invention of 2022 (11/2022)

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Cathy Wuh-106
• Franz-Josef Ulmh-77
• Herbert Einsteinh-51