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Wenzhong Yan is a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Yan recently earned his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 2023. His research interests broadly include origami and soft robotics, mechanical intelligence, computational fabrication, smart materials and structures, and wearable devices. He is the recipient of several awards, including the Edward K. Rice Outstanding Doctoral Student of UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Rising Star of the 2022 Southern California Robotics Symposium, the Harry M. Showman Prize of UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, the best presentation award at the 2022 ICRA Soft Robotics workshop, and the Chinese National Scholarship. His work has been published in Nature Communications, Science Advances, Soft Robotics, Advanced Materials Technology, etc., and highlighted by press outlets, e.g., National Science Foundation News, EurekAlert (AAAS), Popular Science, Daily Bruin. Yan is pursuing a faculty position so he can continue working on impactful research and generating new knowledge.
Soft robots, inspired by nature and constructed mainly from compliant materials, strive to emulate the remarkable abilities of biological systems, especially for unstructured, challenging environments. Yet, they fall short in matching the structural adaptability, physical robustness, and power autonomy (the ability to operate indefinitely without manual infusion of energy) of their natural counterparts. My research aims to bridge this performance gap via Mechanical Intelligence (MI)—embedding sensing, control, actuation, and power into mechanical structures of robotic structures. I will build a computational design and fabrication pipeline to achieve this MI strategy through digital manufacturing. This will lead to the creation of self-sustained, highly adaptable, and exceptionally robust autonomous soft robots (SoftMechs). They may find applications in environment monitoring, search and rescue, space exploration, human-machine interaction, medical devices, education, etc.