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Hui Fang

Associate Professor of Engineering

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; electroactive organisms

Education

BS, Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University 2009
PhD, Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley 2014

Awards

  • NSF CAREER Award, 2019
  • MIT Technology Review TR35, Finalist, 2017

Selected Publications

  • X. Han, K. J. Seo, Y. Qiang, Z. Li, S. Vinnikova, Y. Zhong, X. Zhao, P. Hao, S. Wang, and H. Fang, "Nanomeshed Si Nanomembranes," npj Flexible Electronics, 3:9, 2019.
  • Y. Qiang, P. Artoni, K. J. Seo, S. Culaclii, V. Hogan, X. Zhao, Y. Zhong, X. Han, P.-M. Wang, Y.-K. Lo, Y. Li, H. A. Patel, Y. Huang, A. Sambangi, J. S. V. Chu, W. Liu, M. Fagiolini, and H. Fang, "Transparent Arrays of Bilayer-Nanomesh Microelectrodes for Simultaneous Electrophysiology and 2-Photon Imaging in the Brain," Science Advances, 4, eaat0626, 2018.
  • K.J. Seo, Y. Qiang, I. Bilgin, S. Kar, C. Vinegoni, R. Weissleder, and H. Fang, "Transparent Electrophysiology Microelectrodes and Interconnects from Metal Nanomesh," ACS Nano, 11, 4365–4372, 2017.
  • H. Fang, K.J. Yu, C. Gloschat, Z. Yang, E. Song, C.-H. Chiang, J. Zhao, S.M. Won, S. Xu, M. Trumpis, Y. Zhong, S.W. Han, Y. Xue, D. Xu, S.W. Choi, G. Cauwenberghs, M. Kay, Y. Huang, J. Viventi, I.R. Efimov, and J.A. Rogers, "Capacitively Coupled Arrays of Multiplexed Flexible Silicon Transistors for Long-Term Cardiac Electrophysiology," Nature Biomedical Engineering, 1, 0038, 2017.
  • H. Fang, C. Battaglia, C. Carraro, S. Nemsak, B. Ozdol, J.S. Kang, H.A. Bechtel, S.B. Desai, F. Kronast, A.A. Unal, G. Conti, C. Conlon, G.K. Palsson, M.C. Martin, A.M. Minor, C.S. Fadley, E. Yablonovitch, R. Maboudian, and A. Javey, "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, 2014.
  • H. Fang, H.A. Bechtel, E. Plis, M.C. Martin, S. Krishna, E. Yablonovitch, and A. Javey, "Quantum of Optical Absorption in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 110, 11688-11691, 2013.

Courses

In the News

Research Quick Takes

Professor Hui Fang

Dec 19, 2024

NIH Grant Supports New Tools for Neuroscience

Professor Hui Fang's research group was awarded $2.6M over five years from NIH to develop and optimize a new type of microelectrode array probe used for parallel neuromodulator sensing and electrophysiological recording. "Refining and validating this type of probe would directly enable numerous studies in both basic and translational neuroscience, would be applicable to many other devices, such as DBS and sEEG electrodes, and would also bring the technology a significant step closer to commercial manufacturing," said Fang.

Nanomesh elastic microelectrodes

Jul 25, 2024

Nanomesh for Elastic Neuroelectrodes

Researchers Jaehyeon Ryu, Yi Qiang, Gen Li, and Yongli Qi, PhD student Tianyu Bai, and Professor Hui Fang are co-authors on "Multifunctional Nanomesh Enables Cellular-Resolution, Elastic Neuroelectronics" published in Advanced Materials. "Our study presents a novel approach using conventional electrode materials through multifunctional nanomesh to achieve reliable elastic microelectrodes directly on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) silicone with an unprecedented cellular resolution," says Ryu.