Associate Professor
Biography
Dr. Yuhang Hu Joined the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in August 2018. Prior to that, Dr. Hu was an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2015 to 2018. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in the area of Solid Mechanics. She worked in the area of Materials Chemistry as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard from 2011 to 2014.
Research Areas and Descriptors
Mechanics of Soft Active Materials: stimuli-responsive gels, soft biological tissues, and bio-inspired interfacial materials. The exploratory phenomena include poroelasticity, coupled deformation and chemical reaction, and multi-scale contact of soft wet materials.Research
The research of our group focuses on Soft Active Materials especially those consisting both solid and liquid. Our research is at the interface between mechanics and materials chemistry. Our studies span from fundamental mechanics to novel applications. We take integrated approach of experiment and theory. The current stage of our research includes: (1) chemomechanical modeling of soft materials (2) multi-scale mechanical characterization of soft materials, and (3) design and fabrication of new dynamic adaptive multi-functional materials for various applications. With the tools and knowledge generated from these studies, we also explore the phenomenologically similar but structurally more complex nature soft living systems, such as cells, tissues and organs. (1) Chemo-mechanics: Among many reconfigurable and responsive materials, gels have been in the center stage of research in recent decades. Gels are cross-linked polymer network swollen in an aqueous solution. They are both solid like and liquid like: the polymer matrix can support load and retain shape, and the pores in the matrix are interconnected, and the fluid can flow through the network. The aqueous nature of the material provides an ideal media for coupling with chemical reactions. By incorporating into the network with functional groups that can change the interaction properties with the surrounding liquid and ions in response to stimuli, the gels were made responsive and reconfigurable to temperature, pH, electric field, light etc. In our group, we explore the multiphysics-coupled large deformation of gels.


Education
- Ph.D., Engineering Sciences, Harvard University, 2011
- M.S., Applied Physics, Harvard University, 2009
- M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2007
- B.S., Engineering Mechanics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, 2005