By Shawn Dimantha, Triangle Marketing Editor
A short elevator ride up to the 2nd floor of the LRSM (Laboratory for Research Into the Structure of Matter) building transports you to a different realm: material science and engineering Professor Shu Yang’s realm. Her office is just around the corner, a typical academic setting to the untrained eye. However, to anyone who comes to discover the treasure troves of information Yang has to offer, this office is a gateway to the future.
Talk of tunable liquid microlenses, block copolymers, and controlled wetting permeate the environment. This is the place where the new technologies of the world are being developed. Internet faster than the imagination can conceive. Cell phone cameras more sophisticated than the highest end SLR digital camera on the market. Nanoscale machines capable of reproducing biological processes.
Recently honored as a MIT Tech Review (TR) Top 100 Young Innovator, Yang is riding a fine time towards the top. This is the fourth year the award is being bestowed upon the nation’s young technological elite. Despite the honor she is not completely satisfied.
“I know the first one was in 1999 when I first graduated,” Yang said. “I had gone to Bell Labs, and now it has been going on for four years, so it is very prestigious, and winning it this fourth time was just electric. However, it really tells you need to do better to keep on track and be more innovative and also generate more new results.”
Dr. Yang’s main areas of research (top, left to right): 3D Photonic Crystals, Biomemetic Microlens Arrays, Self-Assembled Nanostructured, and Turnable Microfluid.
Yang has had a long and rarely traveled path to Penn. She began her academic career in Fudan University of Shanghai, China. There, she was first introduced to the field of Materials Science. Yang did not take a typical route to academic engineering. Nor was she a typical engineer. Outside of the academic world, Professor Yang notes a keen interest in sports. She was a sprint runner in high school, having held the record for her school. As she went through her academic and corporate career her physical involvement has diminished, but she still notes a key interest as a spectator.
After her time in Shanghai, she went on to earn her Masters and then PhD at Cornell University. However, she took a break from the academic forum by joining Bell Laboratories in 1999, right after receiving her PhD.
“If I [had gone] directly from Cornell to academics, my life would have been very different. Bell Labs is a very unique place. [It is] a very good place for a young scientist, because once you go through Bell Labs you have the fundamental research environment just like a university.”
These four years of corporate research have given her a multifaceted outlook on research on the whole, and her unique vision is burgeoning at Penn.
“The research is driven by application, driven by technology, it is not work in the backroom, you have to justify why [the project] is interesting, why you want to work on this, why you are putting in your time, basically 12-14 hours a day.”
Professor Yang has taken many of these skills and implemented them in the classroom and in her research. The Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department has had a difficult time attracting students over he past few years, but recently has been enjoying some renewed interest. Many students are discouraged by the lack of current practical application for some of the topics discussed in material science engineering. Yang is looking to turn this around, and is bringing results and partnerships between many schools to the forefront of the MSE Department’s agenda.
Some of her work has to do with the ever increasing speed of the internet. Currently there is a physical limit to internet speed, as existing technology can only push the barrier so far. Telecommunications has largely advanced because of fiber optics, but this relatively new development has also hindered greater efficiency. Yang’s particular interest is in that of the light-induced reactions through polymer surfaces of a photonic crystal.
With the explosion of the Internet, new approaches for the manipulation of photons need to be developed to realize more advanced optical network systems. In a 3D photonic crystal with stacks of alternating high- and low- dielectric-constant materials, light will be reflected and refracted from all directions. Thus, the 3D photonic crystal acts as an optical insulator. It will guide light through engineered defects more efficiently than current fiber optical system. Yang’s lab searches new fabrication methods, such as multibeam interference lithography, to create 3D photonic crystals rapidly and efficiently.
“It’s like an optical trap, which you can introduce defects to guide light. The question is how you realize those three-dimensional structures. That is our interest. That is why we are using this laser technique to pattern various 3D structures. We hope to mass produce them in a large area defect-free and incorporate them into a wealth of devices.”
For many years, technology has improved our lives, but there have been limits that have always accompanied new technologies. Computer processor speeds have generally obeyed Moore’s Law (data density and processor speed double every 18 months), but there is a foreseeable limit to the amount of practical speed a microprocessor can handle. Efforts to commercialize lightning-fast quantum computers have been made, but these attempts are still grounded in the R&D phase. Internet speed has always been relevant to the general consumer, and now broadband seems light years faster than 56 K modems, but what Yang hopes to instill in the telecommunications industry is an environment where no limits really exist.
“That’s the beauty of it, whenever you find a limit, the researcher’s always come up with a new concept, try to pass the limit, to go beyond it.”
She hopes to incorporate some of her other technologies into common use. Some of her most rigorous work has gone into the tunable liquid microlens. The tunable microlens can be a very small inexpensive package that can dynamically tune an incoming light source to different positions, as well as to magnify it. In existing technologies, assemblies of laser chips and light-manipulating components require use of an expensive micromanipulator to make time-consuming alignments of tiny, hard lenses. The tunable microlens may offer an easy-to-tweak alternative, which is low cost and requires little power. Many commercial companies are pursuing this technology
“Cell phone companies are rigorously pursuing this technology for the wireless companies because if you want to transmit information via camera phone, you would want for example an autofocus feature. And right now cell phones can take pictures but not very far or very close up because it is out of focus, limited range of focal distance.”
Since the microlens is voltage driven, the focus can be digitally transmitted, and the range of focus is very wide. Even 3D images can be taken with high resolution at close proximity.
The application of the device is also pertinent to non-commerical uses. Recently, collaboration with Professor Haim Bau at Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics Department has been launched to to construct new, adaptive, micro-scale optical devices. The goal is to provide a wider range tunability of lens optical properties, including varied transmission, numerical aperture and wavelength selectivity, by coupling lenses with microfludics to mimic biological lens arrays discovered in light sensitive brittlestars.
“If they understand the dynamics of a single molecule it really helps in how they treat diseases. I think it is very helpful to both sides; it definitely has a major impact in biology. This is happening right now.
“We learned from biology coupled with nanotechnology to make our studies much more multifunctional. They can understand the biology better, and at the same time biology can help us develop better materials.”
This mutual relationship between departments has helped foster a greater scientific community among the schools at Penn. Yang noted that the walls are “continuing to diminish” between departments and that “the interaction makes research much easier.”
Yang’s lab is spearheading a project dealing with nanopatterning and surface functionalization, in particular, a smart surface that can dynamically tune its wettability from superhydrophobic (extremely averse to water) to superhydrophilic (extremely attracted to water). Currently her group is developing responsive polymers that can be coated on a nanopatterned substrate to induce such an effect. Such surfaces may find applications in bioengineering since biomolecules are extremely sensitive to surface characteristics. Working closely with Professors Berry Cooperman (Chemistry Department), Yale Goldman and Henry Shuman (both in Muscle Institute), Yang believes she could find a new way to help biochemists and biophysicists better understand living organisms.
Ethics always enters a discussion of scientific breakthraough. Yang sees the forward movement not so much as a moral breach on the scientific decorum, but as a way to understand processes much better.
“During a faculty meeting, Dean Glandt was saying how the engineer is driven by the application, without engineers nothing is in practice. I know many people in biology are studying the mechanisms, but how do understand very small molecules? It is by using bettertools that we can help them understand better.”
However, Dr. Yang cannot emphasize enough the importance she sees in the training of young engineers in the fields of chemistry and physics. That is something she tries to push forward in the classes she teaches at Penn (MSE 430 in the Spring 05 semester, for those interested).
While she would not change the course of her career that has brought her to this point, she offered a few pointers to those students looking to get into the field, both from a corporate and an academic side.
“Bell Labs is a very unique place, not many places give you this many choices, freedom in many other things. Most of the industry is very specific, you try to compete. You think of what type of project you want to generate. It is very similar to academics. How do you make something different and make an impact. The difference is [in corporate research] you get exposure to all other fields. [In] academics you have to be more focused, [Bell Labs] give you the opportunity to try different kinds of things.”
It seems as if another Yang will carry the torch of engineering innovation for the next generation. Dr. Yang has a 21 month old daughter who is already showing signs of a budding engineer.
“I found she has lots of very interesting engineering characteristics. She likes to break apart and assemble different things. She is very good at this.”
However, some of Yang’s deepest lessons were learned from her daughter, lessons she applies to the classroom environment every day.
“I spend a lot of time with my daughter, because she is very small, it really helps me to build up my patience, and also how to explain things to young kids. I think it is very helpful to be a professor [when trying to] make her understand things, it takes a lot of energy.”
While Yang has just recently been introduced to the new locale of Philadelphia, she notes that she is not overwhelmed by the atmosphere, as she had been living in Shanghai during her undergraduate years.
“I have not had much time to explore much of the city, but the campus is very nice. I really like to talk with students; that is one of the best parts for me.”
You can count on many innovations springing from the office of Dr. Yang in the next few years. Every time you take a high resolution picture with your cell phone camera, download information instantaneously off the internet, or simply look at the latest mechanisms of biological molecules, keep Professor Yang in mind.
A short elevator ride up to the 2nd floor of the LRSM (Laboratory for Research Into the Structure of Matter) building transports you to a different realm: material science and engineering Professor Shu Yang’s realm. Her office is just around the corner, a typical academic setting to the untrained eye. However, to anyone who comes to discover the treasure troves of information Yang has to offer, this office is a gateway to the future.
Talk of tunable liquid microlenses, block copolymers, and controlled wetting permeate the environment. This is the place where the new technologies of the world are being developed. Internet faster than the imagination can conceive. Cell phone cameras more sophisticated than the highest end SLR digital camera on the market. Nanoscale machines capable of reproducing biological processes.
Recently honored as a MIT Tech Review (TR) Top 100 Young Innovator, Yang is riding a fine time towards the top. This is the fourth year the award is being bestowed upon the nation’s young technological elite. Despite the honor she is not completely satisfied.
“I know the first one was in 1999 when I first graduated,” Yang said. “I had gone to Bell Labs, and now it has been going on for four years, so it is very prestigious, and winning it this fourth time was just electric. However, it really tells you need to do better to keep on track and be more innovative and also generate more new results.”
Dr. Yang’s main areas of research (top, left to right): 3D Photonic Crystals, Biomemetic Microlens Arrays, Self-Assembled Nanostructured, and Turnable Microfluid.
Yang has had a long and rarely traveled path to Penn. She began her academic career in Fudan University of Shanghai, China. There, she was first introduced to the field of Materials Science. Yang did not take a typical route to academic engineering. Nor was she a typical engineer. Outside of the academic world, Professor Yang notes a keen interest in sports. She was a sprint runner in high school, having held the record for her school. As she went through her academic and corporate career her physical involvement has diminished, but she still notes a key interest as a spectator.
After her time in Shanghai, she went on to earn her Masters and then PhD at Cornell University. However, she took a break from the academic forum by joining Bell Laboratories in 1999, right after receiving her PhD.
“If I [had gone] directly from Cornell to academics, my life would have been very different. Bell Labs is a very unique place. [It is] a very good place for a young scientist, because once you go through Bell Labs you have the fundamental research environment just like a university.”
These four years of corporate research have given her a multifaceted outlook on research on the whole, and her unique vision is burgeoning at Penn.
“The research is driven by application, driven by technology, it is not work in the backroom, you have to justify why [the project] is interesting, why you want to work on this, why you are putting in your time, basically 12-14 hours a day.”
Professor Yang has taken many of these skills and implemented them in the classroom and in her research. The Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department has had a difficult time attracting students over he past few years, but recently has been enjoying some renewed interest. Many students are discouraged by the lack of current practical application for some of the topics discussed in material science engineering. Yang is looking to turn this around, and is bringing results and partnerships between many schools to the forefront of the MSE Department’s agenda.
Some of her work has to do with the ever increasing speed of the internet. Currently there is a physical limit to internet speed, as existing technology can only push the barrier so far. Telecommunications has largely advanced because of fiber optics, but this relatively new development has also hindered greater efficiency. Yang’s particular interest is in that of the light-induced reactions through polymer surfaces of a photonic crystal.
With the explosion of the Internet, new approaches for the manipulation of photons need to be developed to realize more advanced optical network systems. In a 3D photonic crystal with stacks of alternating high- and low- dielectric-constant materials, light will be reflected and refracted from all directions. Thus, the 3D photonic crystal acts as an optical insulator. It will guide light through engineered defects more efficiently than current fiber optical system. Yang’s lab searches new fabrication methods, such as multibeam interference lithography, to create 3D photonic crystals rapidly and efficiently.
“It’s like an optical trap, which you can introduce defects to guide light. The question is how you realize those three-dimensional structures. That is our interest. That is why we are using this laser technique to pattern various 3D structures. We hope to mass produce them in a large area defect-free and incorporate them into a wealth of devices.”
For many years, technology has improved our lives, but there have been limits that have always accompanied new technologies. Computer processor speeds have generally obeyed Moore’s Law (data density and processor speed double every 18 months), but there is a foreseeable limit to the amount of practical speed a microprocessor can handle. Efforts to commercialize lightning-fast quantum computers have been made, but these attempts are still grounded in the R&D phase. Internet speed has always been relevant to the general consumer, and now broadband seems light years faster than 56 K modems, but what Yang hopes to instill in the telecommunications industry is an environment where no limits really exist.
“That’s the beauty of it, whenever you find a limit, the researcher’s always come up with a new concept, try to pass the limit, to go beyond it.”
She hopes to incorporate some of her other technologies into common use. Some of her most rigorous work has gone into the tunable liquid microlens. The tunable microlens can be a very small inexpensive package that can dynamically tune an incoming light source to different positions, as well as to magnify it. In existing technologies, assemblies of laser chips and light-manipulating components require use of an expensive micromanipulator to make time-consuming alignments of tiny, hard lenses. The tunable microlens may offer an easy-to-tweak alternative, which is low cost and requires little power. Many commercial companies are pursuing this technology
“Cell phone companies are rigorously pursuing this technology for the wireless companies because if you want to transmit information via camera phone, you would want for example an autofocus feature. And right now cell phones can take pictures but not very far or very close up because it is out of focus, limited range of focal distance.”
Since the microlens is voltage driven, the focus can be digitally transmitted, and the range of focus is very wide. Even 3D images can be taken with high resolution at close proximity.
The application of the device is also pertinent to non-commerical uses. Recently, collaboration with Professor Haim Bau at Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics Department has been launched to to construct new, adaptive, micro-scale optical devices. The goal is to provide a wider range tunability of lens optical properties, including varied transmission, numerical aperture and wavelength selectivity, by coupling lenses with microfludics to mimic biological lens arrays discovered in light sensitive brittlestars.
“If they understand the dynamics of a single molecule it really helps in how they treat diseases. I think it is very helpful to both sides; it definitely has a major impact in biology. This is happening right now.
“We learned from biology coupled with nanotechnology to make our studies much more multifunctional. They can understand the biology better, and at the same time biology can help us develop better materials.”
This mutual relationship between departments has helped foster a greater scientific community among the schools at Penn. Yang noted that the walls are “continuing to diminish” between departments and that “the interaction makes research much easier.”
Yang’s lab is spearheading a project dealing with nanopatterning and surface functionalization, in particular, a smart surface that can dynamically tune its wettability from superhydrophobic (extremely averse to water) to superhydrophilic (extremely attracted to water). Currently her group is developing responsive polymers that can be coated on a nanopatterned substrate to induce such an effect. Such surfaces may find applications in bioengineering since biomolecules are extremely sensitive to surface characteristics. Working closely with Professors Berry Cooperman (Chemistry Department), Yale Goldman and Henry Shuman (both in Muscle Institute), Yang believes she could find a new way to help biochemists and biophysicists better understand living organisms.
Ethics always enters a discussion of scientific breakthraough. Yang sees the forward movement not so much as a moral breach on the scientific decorum, but as a way to understand processes much better.
“During a faculty meeting, Dean Glandt was saying how the engineer is driven by the application, without engineers nothing is in practice. I know many people in biology are studying the mechanisms, but how do understand very small molecules? It is by using bettertools that we can help them understand better.”
However, Dr. Yang cannot emphasize enough the importance she sees in the training of young engineers in the fields of chemistry and physics. That is something she tries to push forward in the classes she teaches at Penn (MSE 430 in the Spring 05 semester, for those interested).
While she would not change the course of her career that has brought her to this point, she offered a few pointers to those students looking to get into the field, both from a corporate and an academic side.
“Bell Labs is a very unique place, not many places give you this many choices, freedom in many other things. Most of the industry is very specific, you try to compete. You think of what type of project you want to generate. It is very similar to academics. How do you make something different and make an impact. The difference is [in corporate research] you get exposure to all other fields. [In] academics you have to be more focused, [Bell Labs] give you the opportunity to try different kinds of things.”
It seems as if another Yang will carry the torch of engineering innovation for the next generation. Dr. Yang has a 21 month old daughter who is already showing signs of a budding engineer.
“I found she has lots of very interesting engineering characteristics. She likes to break apart and assemble different things. She is very good at this.”
However, some of Yang’s deepest lessons were learned from her daughter, lessons she applies to the classroom environment every day.
“I spend a lot of time with my daughter, because she is very small, it really helps me to build up my patience, and also how to explain things to young kids. I think it is very helpful to be a professor [when trying to] make her understand things, it takes a lot of energy.”
While Yang has just recently been introduced to the new locale of Philadelphia, she notes that she is not overwhelmed by the atmosphere, as she had been living in Shanghai during her undergraduate years.
“I have not had much time to explore much of the city, but the campus is very nice. I really like to talk with students; that is one of the best parts for me.”
You can count on many innovations springing from the office of Dr. Yang in the next few years. Every time you take a high resolution picture with your cell phone camera, download information instantaneously off the internet, or simply look at the latest mechanisms of biological molecules, keep Professor Yang in mind.
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I lether finish washing then I let most the water out but stop it while thereis about 3 inches of water. Did you spike our drinks, you naughty girl.
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