Qiming Wang

Research Summary

His research is focused on bioinspired manufacturing and mechanics of unprecedented materials and structures that can potentially address grand engineering challenges in civil and environmental engineering. His recent focus is to address how to restore and improve urban infrastructure: He proposes to harness living chemistry to design novel structures that can enable self-healing and self-strengthening in response to destructive environmental stressors (such as cyclic loads, greenhouse gases, water, and light). He also proposes to harness living microorganisms to design Engineered Living Materials for the next-generation living infrastructure that can self-replicate, self-grow, self-heal, and self-strengthen.

In terms of disciplines and scientific tools, his group integrates experiments, theories, and computations to study cutting-edge problems in two areas: (1) Advanced Manufacturing: additive manufacturing and bioinspired manufacturing processes. (2) Mechanics of Materials and Structures: (a) Engineered Living Materials: microorganism-material hybrids and plant-material hybrids; (b) Smart Materials: stimuli-responsive materials, self-healing materials, and polymer mechanochemistry; (c) Architected Materials: acoustic metamaterials and mechanical metamaterials.