Dr. Xueju ‘‘Sophie’’ Wang is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Connecticut. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016 and was a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University from 2016 to 2018. Her research interests lie in the intersection of active materials, mechanics, and functional structures for applications ranging from soft robotics to flexible electronics. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, NIH Trailblazer Award, Extreme Mechanics Letters (EML) Young Investigator Award, ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award, and ASME ORR Early Career Award in recognition of her significant contributions to her research field.
Read Xueju Wang’s Emerging Investigator article: http://xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/D3SM00563A
Find out more about her work via:
Group Website: https://www.wangresearchlab.com/
Twitter: @XuejuW
How do you feel about Soft Matter as a place to publish research on this topic?
Soft Matter is a well-established journal for reporting significant advances in interdisciplinary soft matter research, especially at the interface between chemistry, materials science, and biology. It is one of my favorite journals because of the rigorous review that helps improve our work and the efficient publication process. In addition, with its broad readership, it offers a great platform to disseminate our research findings and maximize the impact of our work.
What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?
I am very excited about developing soft, pressure-tolerant ocean sensors and integrating them with soft robots for next-generation ocean exploration. Traditional ocean sensors usually require bulky pressure chambers to protect the electronics from damage in harsh ocean environments. Our developed soft ocean sensors, which are made of metal thin films embedded in soft incompressible materials for monitoring ocean temperature, pressure, and salinity, can eliminate the need for pressure chambers and therefore significantly reduce the power supply and the footprint of the sensor. In addition, it has significantly extended the application of current flexible electronics in the low-pressure regime to large hydrostatic-pressure environments for the first time. The most challenging part of this research is the robustness and reliable operation of the developed sensors in harsh, complicated ocean environments, where pressure tolerance and encapsulation under large hydrostatic pressure and salinity environments are critical.
In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?
I think developing soft bio-inspired intelligent systems that can integrate sensing, control, and actuation within one system is very important to safely interact and adapt to the surroundings for applications including ocean exploration, search and rescue, and many others. In addition, efficient power supply especially for flexible miniaturized electronics is another important question to answer.
Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?
One piece of advice that I would like to share is to work on research directions that you are really excited about. Although there may be some potential risks, your interest will really drive you to address the challenges and it would be paid off eventually.
