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Shaoting Lin

Assistant Professor

Dr. Shaoting Lin is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from MIT and his M.S. and B.S. degrees from Tsinghua University. His research integrates solid mechanics, polymer physics, and advanced manufacturing to understand the synthesis-structure-property relationship of soft materials. His group develops high-performing soft materials for addressing hard problems associated with precision and personalized healthcare. His work has been published in journals including Science, Science Advances, Nature Communications, PNAS, Advanced Materials, and JMPS. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and ACS Petroleum Research Fund Award. Currently, he serves as Chair of the ASME Technical Committee on Mechanics of Soft Materials.

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Contact

  • PhD 2019, MIT
  • MA 2013, Tsinghua University
  • BS 2010, Tsinghua University

  • Mechano-diffusion in hydrogels
  • Topological mechanics of soft materials
  • Tactile gel robots
  • Hydrogel bioelectronics
  • Elastocaloric polymers

  • 2026 ASME ORR, Early Career Award
  • 2026 PMSE, Early Investigator Honoree
  • 2025 American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund (PRF), Doctoral New Investigator Grant (DNI)
  • 2025 MSU, 2027 Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award (Nominated)
  • 2025 ASME, Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering
  • 2024 MRS Communications, Early Career Materials Researcher
  • 2024 NSF, Faculty Early Career Award
  • 2024 NSF Foundation Research in Robotics Program, Lead PI Award
  • 2023 NSF Biosensing Program, Lead PI Award

  • Yu, Z., Xu, D., Usmanova, Z., Ye, C., Swarnkar, A., Scott, E., Huang, S., Rao, S., Liu, X., Boriskina, S. V., Bai, R., & Lin, S. (2026). An Elastocaloric Polymer with Ultra-High Solid-State Cooling via Defect Engineering. Advanced Science, 13(10), e18106.
  • Wong, T. H., Ma, J., Sherburne, Z., & Lin, S. (2026). Diffusion and release of molecules in swelling polymer networks. Extreme Mechanics Letters, 102466.
  • Ma, J., Wong, T. H., Yu, Z., Dai, X., Ye, C., Yeo, J., & Lin, S. (2026). Mechano-diffusion of particles in hydrogels. Extreme Mechanics Letters, 102496.
  • Prince, M. R., Kim, J., Zhou, Y., Vrshek, M., Sama, S. R., Khera, A., Athar, S., Xu, Z., Liu, J., Lin, S., & others, (2026). MVP-Tac: A Miniaturized Dual-Modal Vision and Photoelastic Tactile Sensor for Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery. arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.18660.
  • Wong, T. H., Liu, W., Li, J., Ma, J., Cheng, Y., Lu, R., Koster, K. J., Cirillo, J. D., Liu, X., Sasaki, H., Wu, C., & Lin, S. (2026). Tissue-adhesive hydrogel-MXene biosensor for in situ intraoral TNF-$alpha$ detection. Science Advances, 12(3), eady9180.
  • Ye, C., Wong, T. H., Zheng, Y., Lu, R., Ma, J., & Lin, S. (2026). Ultrasound-Mediated Nanoparticle Selectivity in Stretchable Hydrogels. Experimental Mechanics, 1-17.
  • Huang, S., Xiao, R., Lin, S., Wu, Z., Lin, C., Jang, G., Hong, E., Gupta, S., Lu, F., Chen, B., & others, (2025). Anisotropic hydrogel microelectrodes for intraspinal neural recordings in vivo. Nature communications, 16(1), 1127.
  • Bu, L., Yu, Z., Lin, S., Fuhg, J. N., & Yang, J. (2025). Bubble Dynamics Transformer: Microrheology at Ultra-High Strain Rates. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.11936.
  • Liu, J., & Lin, S. (2025). Capturing water from air in an economical and stable way: Atmospheric water harvesting. Nature Water, 3(6), 640-641.
  • Wong, T. H., Liu, J., Cheng, Y., Xie, Y., Anway, C., Lu, R., Ye, C., Yu, Z., Wang, Y., Liu, X., & Lin, S. (2025). Electrical Tissue Adhesives for Strain-Insensitive In-situ Biosensing. Advanced Intelligent Systems, 7(6), 2400697.

  • ME 790 - Master's Research and Thesis (Fall 2026)
  • ME 890 - PhD Research and Thesis (Fall 2026)
  • ME 990 - Dissertator Research and Thesis (Fall 2026)