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Renee Zhao

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering

BioRuike Renee Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University where she directs the Soft Intelligent Materials Laboratory. Renee received her BS degree from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2012, and her MS and PhD degrees from Brown University in 2014 and 2016, respectively. She was a postdoc associate at MIT during 2016-2018 prior to her appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University from 2018 to 2021.

Renee’s research focuses on the development of stimuli-responsive soft composites for multifunctional robotic systems with integrated shape-changing, assembling, sensing, and navigation. By combining mechanics, polymer engineering, and advanced material manufacturing techniques, the functional soft composites enable applications in soft robotics, miniaturized biomedical devices, flexible electronics, and deployable and morphing structures.

Renee is a recipient of the ARO Early Career Program (ECP) Award (2023), AFOSR Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) Award (2023), Eshelby Mechanics Award for Young Faculty (2022), ASME Henry Hess Early Career Publication Award (2022), ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal (2022), ASME Applied Mechanics Division Journal of Applied Mechanics Award (2021), NSF Career Award (2020), and ASME Applied Mechanics Division Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Award (2018).