Tetsu Ouchi was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He received his B.S. in Engineering in 2010 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Keio University, Japan, where he was awarded "Hatakeyama Prize" for the 2nd highest grades in the department by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. He continued his study at Keio University and received his M.S. in Engineering in 2012 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. During his time at Keio University, he studied the fundamental relationship between mechanical/rheological properties and microstructures of stereoregular polymers under the guidance of Professor Atsushi Hotta. For his thesis work, he received the "Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research" award by the American Chemical Society. Through his studies, he was fascinated by polymer materials and decided to pursue his Ph.D. at the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013. He studied mechanical instabilities of soft elastic substrates with Professor Ryan C. Hayward. During his Ph.D., he was awarded "3rd place for the 2017 Journal of Polymer Science poster prize" by the American Physical Society. After completing his Ph.D. in 2019, he followed his curiosity in a smaller length scale, chemistry, and began postdoctoral work with Professor Stephen L. Craig in the Department of Chemistry at Duke University. He is currently working on the synthesis and characterization of polymeric material systems leveraging mechanochemistry. For his postdoctoral work, he received "2023 Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) Future Faculty Honoree" by the American Chemical Society and "3rd Place Poster Award" at the Triangle Soft Matter Workshop. 

When he is not in the lab, he enjoys hanging out with his family and friends, hiking, watching/playing sports, or watching TV shows and movies.