“Art is birth, and you cannot go to a teacher and find out how to be born… you have to struggle… until that image, the one that comes out of your need to create, emerges. ” – Malcah Zeldis

I am a researcher working at the intersection of materials science and robotics. My hometown is Nanjing, and my middle/high school is NFLS. After finishing my B.Sc in Nanjing University in 2006, I moved to Toronto for my doctoral study in Professor Geoffrey Ozin’s Materials Chemistry Lab at the University of Toronto. In June 2011, I got my degree and started a postdoctoral position in Professor Joanna Aizenberg’s Biomineralization and Biomimetics lab at Harvard. From November 2014 till September 2020, I had been working in Professor Metin Sitti’s lab at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems at Stuttgart, Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and then senior research scientist. Since October 2020, I have been an associate professor at University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute and the PI of the Programmable Active Matter Lab.

My work has led me to be acquainted with not only scientists and engineers, but also designers and architects. Even though the tools and techniques we use may differ, what we all share is the creative process, the process of generating ideas and executing them. For those who love their work,  it is a necessity of life.