Mechanics of cell-nanomaterial interactions and some applications in nanomedicine and nanotoxicity

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
5:30 – 6:00 pm
Graham Chapel


Biographical Information

Huajian Gao received his B.S. degree from Xian Jiaotong University of China in 1982, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Science from Harvard University in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He served on the faculty of Stanford University from 1988-2002, as Director of the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research from 2001-2006, and as Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Engineering at Brown University from 2006-2019. In 2019, after becoming a Professor Emeritus at Brown, he joined the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, the world’s fastest rising young university, as one of five Distinguished University Professors at NTU. At the same time, he has been appointed as Scientific Director of the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) of Singapore ’s Agency for Science, Research and Technology (A*Star).

Professor Gao’s research has been focused on the understanding of basic principles that control mechanical properties and behaviors of materials in both engineering and biological systems. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, a top journal in his field. For his research accomplishments and leadership roles in the field, he has been elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and Academia Europaea. He has also received numerous academic honors, from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995 to recent honors including the Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics from the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in 2012, the Prager Medal from Society of Engineering Science in 2015, the Nadai Medal from American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2015 and the Theodor von Karman Medal from American Society of Civil Engineers in 2017.