Join the Morphing Matter Lab
We highly value curious and passionate minds who care about both technology and society.
Our team is highly interdisciplinary and anti-disciplinary. From science to design to engineering, you can always discover your ideal role. We promote both independent thinking and interactive collaboration, aiming to evolve as a team by embracing radical concepts that demand insights from diverse fields. We operate across various scales as well. Whether you specialize in microsystems or architectures, please feel free to reach out to us.
Email Prof. Lining Yao
liningy@berkeley.edu
Navigate: Postdoc | PhD | Undergrad | Research Associates & Interns
Postdoctoral Researchers
Funded open position: 1
We are looking for a postdoc who is an experimentalist, conducting research related to morphing materials. It is a plus if the candidate is familiar with moisture-sensitive morphing materials, cellulose-based based material processing, and/or having mechanics background. Please reach out to Prof. Yao at liningy@berkeley.edu with your CV, key publications, and one reference.
Other postdoctoral/research opportunities:
In general, we are interested in researchers in these directions:
Expanding the multifunctionality of morphing materials and systems in the realms of actuation, sensing, biodegradation, mechanical computation, and energy harvesting.
Exploring sustainable and ecological applications of morphing matter (please refer to our vision paper on Sustainable Morphing Matter)
Inventing novel morphing mechanisms or manufacturing strategies that enable new functionalities of morphing matter.
Advancing the fundamental science and understanding of morphing mechanisms.
Developing hardware and/or computational design tools for advanced morphing matter.
A wild card: If you believe your expertise is not listed above but can have a very radical synergy with morphing matter, feel free to reach out and pitch ideas. For example, maybe you are an expert in plant bioengineering, legged robots, ML or MEMS and are interested in exploring novel combinations of those with morphing matter.
Ph.D. Candidate
Open positions
We will seek 1 or 2 Ph.D. students for the upcoming admissions cycle (Fall 2025 incoming class), through the Berkeley Mechanical Engineering.
In addition to applying through the official application portals, you are encouraged to contact Prof. Yao (liningy@berkeley.edu) with your CV and representative work/publications. In the email, please mention if you have external fellowships, your technical expertise, and concrete ideas and broad vision about potential Ph.D. projects that fit into the scope below.
We look for students who have both rigorous technical backgrounds and imaginative visions to bring creativity and interdisciplinary thinking together.
The open positions may include the following emphases.
Experimental Track - Engineering Design of Morphing Matter: Engineering design, focusing on device design and manufacturing with an emphasis on socially impactful applications. Smart actuation, mechanical computation, and energy harvesting mechanisms are key. We are particularly interested in applications that have a positive environmental impact, e.g., for environmental monitoring, conservation, restoration, and remediation efforts. Mechanics knowledge is needed to derive quantitative experiments, analyze the system behavior, and/or model the system with numerical methods such as FEA or mass-spring models. Design methods including biomimetic design, and nature- or user-centered processes may be relevant when determining the system and application.
Computational Track - Computational Design, Modeling, and Optimization of Morphing Mechanisms: Modeling both geometry and mechanics of different morphing systems and leveraging various optimization methods, including ML, genetic algorithms, generative design techniques, and other data-driven methods, to not only simulate but also design/derive mechanisms, behaviors, and systems. While the candidate may focus on computational methods, gaining hands-on experience and design insights to identify intriguing morphing mechanisms to study is critical. Often, the computational design candidate has to lead or participate in the process of designing and interpreting physical experiments. Gaining knowledge and insights in modeling physical morphing systems requires an understanding of the mechanics and mechanisms of chosen morphing systems. In general, the candidate is expected to like coding and engineering applied math.
More broadly, we are looking for students in one or multiple of these directions:
Expanding the multifunctionality of morphing materials and systems in the realms of actuation, sensing, biodegradation, mechanical computation, and energy harvesting.
Exploring sustainable and ecological applications of morphing matter (please refer to our vision paper on Sustainable Morphing Matter)
Inventing novel morphing mechanisms or manufacturing strategies that enable new functionalities of morphing matter.
Advancing the fundamental science and understanding of morphing mechanisms.
Developing hardware and/or computational design tools for advanced morphing matter.
What is your academic community / Where do you publish papers?
We expect you to choose a home community in either HCI (e.g., ACM CHI, UIST) or (Soft) Robotics (e.g., IROS, ICRA), and regularly publish in top conference venues.
In addition, we encourage you to aim high and publish at least one or two papers in top journals (e.g., Nature, Science, Science Advances, etc)
Aside from attending academic conferences from your home community (again, either HCI or Robotics), we offer the opportunity and encourage you to attend interdisciplinary conferences in the field of material science, mechanics, and manufacturing (e.g., MRS, SES, and GRCs), and/or computer science (e.g., Siggraph, CVPR), depending on your academic career path.
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We will seek 2 Ph.D. students for the upcoming admissions cycle (Fall 2024 incoming class), through the Berkeley Mechanical Engineering.
We may seek 1 Ph.D. student for the upcoming admissions cycle (Fall 2024 incoming class), through the Berkeley EECS.
In addition to applying through the official application portals, please contact Prof. Yao (liningy@berkeley.edu) for interviews. Please prepare for 30 min to talk in-depth about a) your technical expertise; b) one impressive and representative project from the past; and c) your concrete ideas and broad vision about potential Ph.D. projects that fit into the scope below.
We look for students who have both rigorous technical backgrounds and imaginative visions to bring creativity and interdisciplinary thinking together.
The open positions may include the following emphases.
Experimental Track - Engineering Design of Morphing Matter: Engineering design, focusing on device design and manufacturing with an emphasis on socially impactful applications. Smart actuation, mechanical computation, and energy harvesting mechanisms are key. We are particularly interested in applications that have a positive environmental impact, e.g., for environmental monitoring, conservation, restoration, and remediation efforts. Mechanics knowledge is needed to derive quantitative experiments, analyze the system behavior, and/or model the system with numerical methods such as FEA or mass-spring models. Design methods including biomimetic design, and nature- or user-centered processes may be relevant when determining the system and application.
Computational Track - Computational Design, Modeling, and Optimization of Morphing Mechanisms: Modeling both geometry and mechanics of different morphing systems and leveraging various optimization methods, including ML, genetic algorithms, generative design techniques, and other data-driven methods, to not only simulate but also design/derive mechanisms, behaviors, and systems. While the candidate may focus on computational methods, gaining hands-on experience and design insights to identify intriguing morphing mechanisms to study is critical. Often, the computational design candidate has to lead or participate in the process of designing and interpreting physical experiments. Gaining knowledge and insights in modeling physical morphing systems requires an understanding of the mechanics and mechanisms of chosen morphing systems. In general, the candidate is expected to like coding and engineering applied math.
More broadly, we are looking for students in one or multiple of these directions:
Expanding the multifunctionality of morphing materials and systems in the realms of actuation, sensing, biodegradation, mechanical computation, and energy harvesting.
Exploring sustainable and ecological applications of morphing matter (please refer to our vision paper on Sustainable Morphing Matter)
Inventing novel morphing mechanisms or manufacturing strategies that enable new functionalities of morphing matter.
Advancing the fundamental science and understanding of morphing mechanisms.
Developing hardware and/or computational design tools for advanced morphing matter.
What is your academic community / Where do you publish papers?
We expect you to choose a home community in either HCI (e.g., ACM CHI, UIST) or (Soft) Robotics (e.g., IROS, ICRA), and regularly publish in top conference venues.
In addition, we encourage you to aim high and publish at least one or two papers in top journals (e.g., Nature, Science, Science Advances, etc)
Aside from attending academic conferences from your home community (again, either HCI or Robotics), we offer the opportunity and encourage you to attend interdisciplinary conferences in the field of material science, mechanics, and manufacturing (e.g., MRS, SES, and GRCs), and/or computer science (e.g., Siggraph, CVPR), depending on your academic career path.
Research Associates & Interns
General opportunities:
We are interested in hosting visiting scholars, research associates and student interns across disciplines, both domestically and internationally. Depending on the projects’ needs and ones’ previous experiences, these could be either paid or non-paid positions.
Typically, researchers who are hired under specific funded projects with matching expertise are paid or partially paid; Junior researchers and students may participate in existing research on a voluntary basis; International visiting scholars and students are often self-funded or funded by their home institutions.
For research productivity, we encourage at least 6-month commitments, especially for international visitors.
Please contact Prof. Yao (liningy@berkeley.edu) to apply.
Undergraduate Students
General opportunities:
We welcome both Berkeley undergraduates and undergraduates from other universities, who are interested in gaining research experience in the areas of mechanical design, digital fabrication, user-centered research inquiry, and experimental characterization. Please note that we generally discourage short term projects (single semester) since there is a significant amount of training required prior to participating in one of our research programs. Students interested in long-term (one year or more) intensive research projects are encouraged to contact Prof. Yao.
Undergraduates may participate in research voluntarily in the lab. However, to seek funding or course credits:
Berkeley undergraduates can check out here for funding opportunities. Including, Berkeley Engineering Design Scholars Program, Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) for course credits, Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) for funded opportunities,
For undergraduates outside of Berkeley, you may seek funding opportunities from your home school.
For full-time summer research opportunities, all undergraduates in or outside of Berkeley may reach out to Prof. Yao for NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) opportunities.