CKSRI Seminar Series 2026 "Mechano-Intelligent Metamaterials"
CKSRI Seminar Series 2026
"Mechano-Intelligent Metamaterials"
Date: 29 October 2026
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM HKT
Venue: Room 4504 (Lift 25, 26), Academic Building, HKUST
Event Format: Seminar, Lecture, Talk
Speaker: Prof. CHEN Yang Yang
ABSTRACT
In most robots, intelligence resides in central processors, while the materials of the body play a passive role. This talk introduces mechano-intelligent metamaterials, which move part of that intelligence into the material: architected lattice materials that automatically change shape, modulate internal forces, and control vibrations and waves through sensing, actuation, adaptation, and energy-management functions programmed into the microstructure, without external digital computation. Such behaviors require constitutive properties that ordinary solids do not possess, including polar and Willis-type couplings and non-conservative active interactions. I will show how my group at HKUST designs these properties with mechanics theory and builds lattices that realize them. Three examples illustrate the approach: (1) gauge transformation elasticity, which prescribes the full displacement field of a solid by design and has led to reconfigurable metamaterials whose displacement response stays the same while they change shape; (2) active wires with asymmetric Willis-type viscosity that sustain their own oscillations and traveling waves without periodic driving; and (3) physical learning, in which solids acquire target stiffness and deformation pathways through local rules rather than central control. I will close with opportunities for soft robots, morphing and deployable structures, and self-powered machines, and with ideas for collaboration with the Robotics Institute.
About the Speaker
Dr. Yangyang Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at HKUST. After receiving a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Missouri in 2017, Dr. Chen worked there as a postdoctoral fellow and then Research Assistant Professor before joining HKUST in 2021. Dr. Chen’s group develops mechano-intelligent metamaterials. The group combines solid mechanics, active materials, and control theory with experiments to create materials that sense, actuate, adapt, and learn without external digital computation. Dr. Chen has published more than 60 papers in journals including Nature Communications, PNAS, Physical Review Letters, and Advanced Science, and has been on the Stanford/Elsevier list of the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists since 2022.