Siyi Xu

For More Information

• Personal Website

Education

• B.S., Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016
• M.S., Engineering Sciences - Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Harvard University, 2018
• Ph.D., Engineering Sciences - Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Harvard University, 2022

Academic Positions

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University, 2022-2023
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University, 2023-present
• Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, starting August 2024

Research Interests

• Soft robotics
• Electrically-responsive soft actuators and transducers
• Stretchable and flexible sensors
• Wearable and implantable electronics

Selected Articles in Journals

• Xu, S., Nunez, C. M., Souri, M., Wood, R. J., An electrically-driven dynamic soft peristaltic pump for soft fluidic robots, Science Robotics, 8(79), 2023
• Poccard-Saudart, J., Xu, S., Teeple C. B., Hyun, N.P., Becker, K.P., and Wood, R. J., Controlling soft fluidic actuators using sot DEA-based valves, Robotics and Automation Letters, 7(4), pp.8837-8844, 2022
• Xu, S., Chen, Y., Hyun, N.P., Becker, K.P., A dynamic electrically-driven soft valve for control of fluidic soft actuators, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(34), 2021.
• Chen, Y., Xu, S., Ren, Z., Chirarattananon, P. Collision Resilient Insect-Scale Soft-Actuated Aerial Robots With High Agility. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2021.
• Xu, S., Vogt, D., Osborne, J., Walsh, T., Foster, J., Sullivan, S., Smith, V., Rousing, A., Goldfield, E., Wood, R. J., “Biocompatible Soft Fluidic Strain and Force Sensors for Wearable Devices”, Advanced Functional Materials, 29(7), 2019 (Cover Article)
• Fang, H.†, Yu, K.J.†, Gloschat, C., Yang, Z., Song, E., Chiang, C.H., Zhao, J., Won, S.M., Xu, S., Trumpis, M. and Zhong, Y., “Capacitively coupled arrays of multiplexed flexible silicon transistors for long-term cardiac electrophysiology”, Nature biomedical engineering, 1(3), pp.1-12, 2017. (†authors contributed equally to this work)
• Feng, Di†, Zhang, H.†, Xu, S., Tian, Li., and Song N., “Stretchable array of metal nanodisks on a 3D sinusoidal wavy elastomeric substrate for frequency tunable plasmonics”, Nanotechnology, 28(11), 2017. (†authors contributed equally to this work
• Feng, D., Zhang, H., Xu, S., Tian, L., and Song, N. Fabrication of plasmonic nanoparticles on a wave shape PDMS substrate. Plasmonics, 12(5), 1627-1631, 2017
• Gao, L., Zhang, Y., Zhang, H., Doshay, S., Xie, X., Luo, H., Shah, D., Shi, Y., Xu S., Fang, H. and Fan, J.A., Optics and nonlinear buckling mechanics in large-area, highly stretchable arrays of plasmonic nanostructures. Acs Nano, 9(6), 5968-5975, 2015.

Research Honors

• IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award (2021)
• Rising Stars in Mechanical Engineering (2021)