Rate My Professor Shanshan Yao

Shanshan Yao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University, joining the faculty in January 2020. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2016, a Master of Engineering in Microelectronics and Solid-State Electronics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2012, and a Bachelor of Engineering in Microelectronics from the same institution in 2009. Prior to her appointment at Stony Brook, she was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at North Carolina State University from 2017 to 2019. Her diverse academic background in electrical engineering, electronic materials, and mechanical engineering positions her uniquely to advance soft electronics research.

Professor Yao's research centers on functional materials, smart structures, advanced manufacturing, and soft electronics, with applications in personal healthcare, fitness tracking, rehabilitation, soft robotics, human-machine interactions, and entertainment. Her group develops innovations such as synthesis and characterization of nano/micro materials, manufacturing techniques for smart devices, soft actuators, flexible and stretchable electronics, wearable sensors, and haptic interfaces. Notable achievements include the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2023, providing $500,000 for the project 'Closing the Loop of Human-Machine Interactions via Skin-Like Multimodal Haptic Interfaces,' aimed at enhancing robotics, prosthetics, teleoperation, and virtual reality through skin-sensible haptic cues. She also received the Stony Brook University Trustee Award in 2024, served as principal investigator on NSF awards in 2021 and 2024, and co-principal investigator on the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) in 2025 and the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) seed grant in 2024. As a reviewer for prestigious journals including Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Materials Horizons, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, and Nanoscale, her contributions have garnered over 2,100 citations. Key publications include 'Omnidirectional Wireless Power Transfer via Magnetoelectric Composite Transducer Arrays for Untethered Bioelectronic Systems' (2026), 'Programming Magnetic Composites and Phase Change Materials for Multimodal Haptic Interfaces with Integrated Self-Sensing' (2026), 'A surface electromyography–based deep learning model for guiding semi‐autonomous drones in road infrastructure inspection' (2025), 'Unobtrusive Swallow Monitoring Enabled by Conformal IONOGEL Biopotential Electrodes and Machine Learning' (2025), and 'Highly sensitive and robust soft tri-axial tactile sensors enabled by dual inductive sensing mechanisms' (2025).