2018 Materials Today Rising Stars Announced

2018 Materials Today Rising Star Awardees

Advanced Manufacturing

Yuebing Zheng 

University of Texas at Austin

Yuebing Zheng is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, directing Zheng Research Group (http://zheng.engr.utexas.edu). He is holding the Temple Foundation Endowed Teaching Fellowship in Engineering #2. Yuebing received his Ph.D. in Engineering Science and Mechanics (with Prof. Tony Jun Huang) from the Pennsylvania State University, USA, in 2010 and was a recipient of Alumni Association Dissertation Award and Graduate School Alumni Society Early Career Award. He was a postdoctoral researcher in Chemistry and Biochemistry (with Prof. Paul S. Weiss) at the University of California, Los Angeles from 2010 to 2013.

His research group focuses on innovating optical manipulation and measurement for the biological and nanoscale world. He received 2020 IEEE NANO Best Poster Award, 2019 University Co-op Research Excellence Award for Best Paper, 2018 Materials Today Rising Star Award, 2017 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 2017 NASA Early Career Faculty Award, 2017 ONR Young Investigator Award, 2015 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, and 2014 Beckman Young Investigator Award. Yuebing is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Data Science

Jian Wang 

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Dr. Jian Wang is Wilmer J. and Sally L. Hergenrader Presidential Chair Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his Ph.D from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) from 2006 to 2015, and then moved to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Aug. 2015. His research focuses on quantitatively exploring the structure-properties relations of materials using multi-scale theory, modeling and experimental methods and techniques. He has published more than 320 peer-reviewed papers, and delivered 150+ invited/keynote lectures. He was awarded the LANL Distinguished Postdoctoral Performance Award (2009), the LDRD/Early Career Award (2011), TMS MPMD Young Leader Award (2013), International Plasticity Young Research Award (2015), Materials Today Rising Star Award in the category of Materials Genome Innovation (2018), and TMS MPMD Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award (2022). He is a fellow of ASME (2020 Class) and ASM (2022 Class). He served as Editorial Board of International Journal of Plasticity (2015~), Materials Research Letters (2016~), and six others. He can be reached by email: jianwang@unl.edu.

Next Generation Sensors

Jacob T. Robinson

Rice University

Jacob Robinson (http://www.robinsonlab.com) is an Associate Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Bioengineering at Rice University, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. His research group uses nanofabrication technology to create miniature devices to manipulate and monitor neural circuit activity.  He received a B.S. in Physics from UCLA in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 2008. He then began a postdoctoral research position in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, where he created silicon nanowire devices to probe the electrical and chemical activity of living cells. In 2012, he joined the ECE and BioE departments at Rice.  Dr. Robinson is a performer on several DARPA neurotech and bioelectronics programs and currently leads one of the N3 teams creating non-surgical neural interfaces. Dr. Robinson is the recipient of the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Materials Today Rising Star Award, and is a Senior Member of IEEE. He previously served as the co-chair of the IEEE Brain Initiative and a core member of the IEEE Brain Neuroethics working group. He is also CEO and Co-Founder of Motif Neurotech.

Biomaterials / Soft Materials 

Xuanhe Zhao 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Xuanhe Zhao is a professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering (by courtesy) at MIT. The mission of Zhao Lab at MIT is to advance science and technology on the interfaces between humans and machines for addressing grand societal challenges in health and sustainability with integrated expertise in mechanics, materials and biotechnology. A major focus of Zhao Lab's current research is the study and development of soft materials and systems.