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Professor Fang holds a 3D soft neural probe. (Photo by Kathryn Lapierre)
Overview
Professor Fang enjoys teaching and researching innovative materials, structures, and devices as solutions to address various grand challenges facing humanity, especially in biology and medicine. A particular focus in his group is to develop scalable multifunctional materials and devices, to enable convergence research to, on the one hand, respond to the complex spatiotemporal nature of the hard problems they are addressing, and to, on the other, leverage the global development of artificial intelligence. This work also involves investigating fundamental multiphysics science (mechanical, electrical, electrochemical, optical, etc.) at various surfaces and interfaces, understanding biotic-abiotic interactions, and harnessing such knowledge to engineering system-level performance. Current research concentrates on multifunctional materials and devices for large-scale soft microsystem development, all lately with an emphasis on neuroelectronics. These efforts are highly multidisciplinary, and combine expertise from materials science, device engineering, and neural engineering.
Research Interests
Neuroelectronics; electronic materials; semiconductor devices; brain-computer interfaces; neurochemical sensing
Education
BS, Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University 2009
PhD, Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley 2014
Awards
- Senior Member, National Academy of Inventors (NAI), 2026
- Thayer Distinguished Research Award for Faculty, 2025
- NSF CAREER Award, 2019
- Finalist, MIT Technology Review TR35, 2017
Research Projects
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Materials and tissue interface engineering for neural probes
Materials and tissue interface engineering for neural probes
The long-term performance of neural probes depends critically on the materials that form the device and how they mechanically and biologically interact with surrounding tissue. Materials science determines properties such as electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance, flexibility, and barrier integrity, while biomechanics governs how the probe's stiffness, geometry, and micromotion influence strain and damage in neural tissue. At the tissue interface, factors including protein adsorption, cellular responses, inflammation, and glial encapsulation shape the stability of electrical recording and stimulation over time. Understanding and engineering these coupled material–mechanical–biological interactions are essential for creating neural probes that maintain stable functionality, minimize tissue damage, and operate reliably for years in the brain or peripheral nervous system.
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3D neuroelectronics
3D neuroelectronics
This project will investigate a set of foundational flexible-electronic designs and systems in order to, for the first time, establish a new neural probe paradigm—a monolithic 3D neuroelectronic system. This program will not only produce a powerful tool for neuroscience research and investigating/ diagnosing nervous system disorders, but also create unique opportunities for novel prostheses and brain-computer interfaces.
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Real-time neurochemical sensing
Real-time neurochemical sensing
This study aims to transform microelectrode arrays (MEA) into a multimodal platform technology capable of parallel neuromodulator sensing. This powerful multimodal-MEA paradigm is expected to directly enable new hypothesis-driven neuroscience studies by overcoming major barriers to scaling up in vivo neurochemical measurements and integrating them with electrical recordings in highly challenging spatial and temporal domains. The knowledge from this project will also be broadly applicable to a large and increasing group of neural probe implants for research and clinical use.
Selected Publications
- Han X, Seo KJ, Qiang Y, Li Z, Vinnikova S, Zhong Y, Zhao X, Hao P, Wang S, Fang H. (2019) "Nanomeshed Si Nanomembranes." npj Flexible Electronics. 3:9.
- Qiang Y, Artoni P, Seo KJ, Culaclii S, Hogan V, Zhao X, Zhong Y, Han X, Wang P-M, Lo Y-K, Li Y, Patel HA, Huang Y, Sambangi A, Chu JSV, Liu W, Fagiolini M, Fang H. (2018) "Transparent Arrays of Bilayer-Nanomesh Microelectrodes for Simultaneous Electrophysiology and 2-Photon Imaging in the Brain." Science Advances. 4: eaat0626.
- Seo KJ, Qiang Y, Bilgin I, Kar S, Vinegoni C, Weissleder R, Fang H. (2017) "Transparent Electrophysiology Microelectrodes and Interconnects from Metal Nanomesh." ACS Nano. 11: 4365–4372.
- Fang H, Yu KJ, Gloschat C, Yang Z, Song E, Chiang C-H, Zhao J, Won SM, Xu S, Trumpis M, Zhong Y, Han SW, Xue Y, Xu D, Choi SW, Cauwenberghs G, Kay M, Huang Y, Viventi J, Efimov IR, Rogers JA. (2017) "Capacitively Coupled Arrays of Multiplexed Flexible Silicon Transistors for Long-Term Cardiac Electrophysiology." Nature Biomedical Engineering. 1: 0038.
- Fang H, Battaglia C, Carraro C, Nemsak S, Ozdol B, Kang JS, Bechtel HA, Desai SB, Kronast F, Unal AA, Conti G, Conlon C, Palsson GK, Martin MC, Minor AM, Fadley CS, Yablonovitch E, Maboudian R, Javey A. (2014) "Strong Interlayer Coupling in van der Waals Heterostructures Built from Single-Layer Chalcogenides." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 111(17): 6198–6202.
- Fang H, Bechtel HA, Plis E, Martin MC, Krishna S, Yablonovitch E, Javey A. (2013) "Quantum of Optical Absorption in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 110: 11688–11691.
Patents
- Systems and methods for multiplexed amplifiers for brain computer interfaces | 12333073
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