Shu Yang
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Materials Science
Nature builds materials that are both light and very strong, such as spider silk, dragonfly wings and wood. It also builds structures that change shape on their own, such as seeds that bury themselves.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
Chemistry
- Topics
bioinspired materials
biomimetic design
self-morphing materials
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2029
What they work on
- Develop biodegradable, self-burying seed carriers for aerial seeding that dig to a protective depth, shielding seeds from animals and harsh conditions to improve sprouting and seedling survival.
- Design seed carriers for the needs of different tree species and environments, building a library of designs, and model the self-burying process to make it work better.
- Create ecological field-testing protocols and an evaluation pipeline, guided by forest ecology, to test how the seed carriers affect forest regrowth and biodiversity.
- Assemble strong, responsive materials at the nanometer and micrometer scale from bio-based, bioinspired composites whose properties depend on direction, guided by computer models of shape-changing structures.
- Manufacture these materials into meter-scale structures using origami and kirigami folding, modular assembly and on-demand printing, tuning surface interactions so parts can be reused, repurposed and upcycled.
More about the research
These abilities come from carefully arranged structures at very small scales. The lab's two projects borrow these design ideas to make sustainable, shape-changing materials and devices. One project aims at building parts that could replace waste-heavy concrete and steel. The other aims at biodegradable seed carriers that could help forests grow back.
Why it matters
Self-burying seed carriers could make aerial seeding cheaper and more successful. This would help forest managers restore forests and support biodiversity across different ecosystems. Lightweight, reusable bio-based building parts could cut the construction waste and energy use of concrete and steel in buildings, bridges and other products, and could support more sustainable manufacturing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lining Yao
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Develop biodegradable, bioinspired seed carriers that bury themselves at optimal depths after aerial seeding, protecting seeds from herbivores and harsh conditions to improve germination and seedling establishment.
Xiaojia Zhang
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Engineering·Early-career
Test whether local constitutive behavior, meaning how a small region of material responds to force, links local structural deformation to global fracture, using theory and simulation of homogeneous, defected and heterogeneous metamaterial networks.
Yiwei Han
University of Mississippi, MS·Engineering·Early-career
Determine how extrusion-printed shape-changing structures affect electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing, a high-resolution method that jets fine droplets with an electric field, and how EHD deposition speed affects resolution and impact damage.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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