June 4, 2024 New Mechanical Engineering Faculty: Xiao Kuang Written By: Caitlin Scott Departments: Mechanical Engineering Categories: Faculty Xiao Kuang will join the Department of Mechanical Engineering as an Assistant Professor in August 2024! Kuang will bring his talents to the Polymer Engineering Center and has research plans for designing and printing functional soft materials to address challenges in sustainability and healthcare. The Kuang Lab focuses on understanding and developing transformative manufacturing technologies for soft (bio)materials and systems. Through experimental, theoretical analysis, and computational tools, the lab studies the functional responses of (bio)polymeric systems to external stimuli (such as heat, light, chemical, mechanical, and acoustic fields) and establish high-quality synthesis-process-structure-property relationships. The objective is to guide the design of multifunctional composite (bio)materials and innovate advanced manufacturing technologies. Kuang earned his PhD in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School.