Overview & Interests

We are interested in processing and properties of materials, with a current focus on soft materials and interfacial properties. We combine theory and experiment in our work. There are ongoing projects on adhesion & friction, the mechanics of soft materials, and biomechanics of vesicle fusion and viral internalization into cells.

Biomolecular and cellular mechanics: applied to synaptic transmission, viral-cell membrane adhesion, single-molecule force spectroscopy of peeling;

Biomimetic Materials and Architectures for Surface Mechanical Properties: Design, fabrication, measurement, and analysis of biomimetic materials for unique surface mechanical properties such as adhesion, friction, and contact compliance;

Fracture, Adhesion, and Other Mechanical Properties of Soft Materials: Mechanical properties of compliant materials, fundamentals of adhesion, surface constitutive behavior in soft materials.

Droplets Resuspension: Mechanical process of droplets resuspension, preventing aerosol transmissible disease.

Earlier Work: Sintering and compaction of powdered packings, computational fracture mechanics,film-terminated fibrillar architecture: self-collapsed structure, mechanical Properties of laminated glass, single molecule force spectroscopy: peeling DNA from graphite and carbon nanotubes, SWCNT-based sensors stress measurement in films, SWCNTs in cells: entry mechanism in HUVEC cells deposition of SWCNTs on surfaces, hybrids of DNA and single-wall nanotubes