I am currently a postdoctoral fellow working on synthetic embryology in Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Michigan, after I obtained my PhD degree in mechanics of solids from Brown University.  My major research interests reside in developing computational and engineering tools to control the fate of biological entities like bacteria and cells and as such build novel medical strategies. 

More About Me

An overarching goal of my academic career is to understand the driving force underlying the fate, form, and function of biological systems. Given their systematic complexity, I always hold the faith that a combination of theoretical, computational, and experimental methodologies is a necessary foundation for rationalizing the emerging properties and behaviors in biology, which thus defines the path I have taken since I was a graduate student. I obtained my PhD degree in mechanics of solids at Brown University, where I worked on various projects that focused on bio-systems ranging from bacterial membrane to human heart through theories and simulations in Prof. Huajian Gao's group (more details can be found on the research page). In these projects, we investigated how the behaviors of tissues and organisms can be engineered through mechanical stimuli/perturbations. Our work established a cornerstone for future strategies of developing drugs and therapies against bacterial infection and myocardial infarction.

Upon the completion of my PhD work, I start to wonder if we can modulate the fate of biological bodies on a more fundamental level. Later, I joined the Integrated Biosystems and Biomechanics Laboratory directed by Prof. Jianping Fu at University of Michigan, where I work on experimentally developing microfluidic devices and micro-patterning protocols to recapitulate the early human embryo development in-vitro using human pluripotent stem cells. I analyzed the scRNA-seq dataset generated from the in vitro model through machine learning-based algorithms and constructed a mathematical model to theorize the spine segmentation. 

Throughout my career, I persistently aspire to acquire expertise in both theories and experiments, and the future goal is further integrating both physics-based and data-driven methods to push the boundaries of human knowledge in medical sciences and health technologies.