Faculty
Bio: Jinxing Li is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering. He joined MSU as part of the university’s Global Impact Initiative from Stanford University, where he did his postdoctoral research on engineering soft materials to make miniaturized devices for biomolecular sensing, neuromodulation, and adaptive locomotion. He received his Ph.D. in NanoEngineering at UC San Diego, where he developed a nanorobotic toolbox and pioneered the therapeutic use of micro/nanorobotics. He was a visiting scholar at Bell Labs working on wearable telemedicine devices. He received his B.S. in Huazhong University of Science and Technology and M.S. in Fudan University, both in Electrical Engineering. He is a recipient of Siebel Scholar of Bioengineering, Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award, Dan David Prize Scholarship, American Chemical Society Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award, MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35, and 30 Rising Leaders in The Life Sciences.
Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Cd7lEf4AAAAJ&hl=en
Webpage: https://www.labli.net/
Bio: Dr. Lin has been focused on fundamental problems associated with the mechanical failures of soft materials and the longevity of soft machines. The research in Lin Research Group at MSU, at the intersection of solid mechanics, polymer science, and advanced manufacturing, aims to understand the processing-structure-property relationships of soft materials, thereby pushing the limit of mechanical and physical properties of soft materials. Our mission is to leverage Extreme Soft Materials for developing next-generation technologies including in-situ bioelectronics, sustainable water harvesting, and efficient polymer recycling.
Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=p6j78JoAAAAJ&hl=en
Bio: Dr. Tong (Tony) Gao is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University, where he directs the Complex Fluids Group. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. Then he worked as a research scientist in the Applied Mathematics Lab at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. Dr. Gao works in the interdisciplinary areas of soft condensed matter, fluid mechanics, and materials via mathematical modeling and high-performance computing. His expertise lies in constructing advanced computational mechanics models for fluid-solid systems with high complexities (e.g., many-body interactions) and nonlinearity (e.g., fluid/elastic structure interactions), and developing scalable simulation tools to promote data-driven, physics-informed studies. Dr. Gao received the NSF CAREER award in 2020. The current focused research topics include bioactive matter, soft robotics, and patient-specific medical models.
Webpage: https://www.egr.msu.edu/~gaotong/
Bio: Dr. Tan received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in automatic control from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1995, 1998, respectively, and his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland in 2002. From September 2002 to July 2004, he was a Research Associate with the Institute for Systems Research (ISR) at the University of Maryland. In August 2004 he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, where he is currently an MSU Foundation Professor and the Richard M. Hong Endowed Chair. His research interests include underwater robotics, soft robotics, smart materials, and control systems. Dr. Tan's research has been supported by National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Geological Survey, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Toyota, Naval Research Lab, U.S. Department of Transportation, and MSU Foundation, among others.
Dr. Tan is a Fellow of IEEE and ASME. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2006, MSU Teacher-Scholar Award in 2010, Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award (senior category) from MSU College of Engineering in 2018, and Distinguished Alumni Award from Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Maryland in 2018. He has received several Best Paper Awards. He has served as a Senior Editor for IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (TMECH), an Associate Editor/Technical Editor for TMECH, Automatica, and International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, and a guest editor for six journal special issues or sections. Dr. Tan has served on the organizing or program committees for a number of international conferences, including serving as the Program Chair for the 15th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR'2011), General Chair for the 2018 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference (DSCC'2018), Program Chair for the 2020 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM'2020), and General Chair for 2023 American Control Conference (ACC'2023). Dr. Tan is also keen to integrate his research with educational and outreach activities, including serving as Director of an NSF-funded Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Site program at MSU from 2009 – 2016 and Curator of a robotic fish exhibit at MSU Museum from April 2016 to January 2017.
Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tsJSW2MAAAAJ&hl=en
Webpage: https://www.egr.msu.edu/~xbtan/
Bio: Dr. Zhaojian Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University. He obtained M.S. (2013) and Ph.D. (2015) in Aerospace Engineering (flight dynamics and control) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. As an undergraduate, Dr. Li studied at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Department of Civil Aviation, in China. Dr. Li worked as an algorithm engineer at General Motors from January 2016 to July 2017. His research interests lie in the intersection between control theory and machine learning, with applications to intelligent vehicles and robotics. His research has been funded by National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, US Department of Agriculture, Army, Office of Naval Research, Ford, DENSOR, T-Mobile, among others. He is a senior member of IEEE and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award.
Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3TUhNa0AAAAJ&hl=en
Webpage: https://www.egr.msu.edu/rival/