Nanshu Lu, PhD
Assistant Professor
Email: nanshulu@mail.utexas.edu
Phone: (512) 471-4208
Office: EER 7.614B (map)
Dr. Nanshu Lu joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor in August 2011.
Dr. Lu received her bachelor’s degree in Solid Mechanics from the Department of Engineering Mechanics at Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2005. She obtained her master’s degree in Applied Physics from School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University in 2006. She then started her research in thin film mechanics working with Professors Zhigang Suo and Joost Vlassak at Harvard and received her Ph.D. in 2009. Her PhD thesis entitled “Mechanics of Hard Films on Soft Substrates” investigated the deformation and failure mechanisms of thin films of metallic and ceramic materials supported by soft polymeric substrates through combined experimental, theoretical, and numerical methods.
Dr. Lu then received a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship and became a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she learned design and micro-fabrication of stretchable electronics. She and her co-workers sought for understandings and solutions of integrating soft electronics with biology for in-vivo physiological monitoring and treatment. Her representative work includes instrumented balloon catheters for minimally invasive surgeries, tattoo-like epidermal electronics, and wearable finger-tip electrotactile display. Her research has been highlighted by news media such as “Nature,” “Science,” “Chemical & Engineering News,” “Technology Review,” BBC, CNN and others.
At UT Austin, Dr. Lu’s research group now focuses on the mechanics of stretchable electronics in all aspects ranging from materials properties to structural design, from micro-fabrication to mechanical tests, from inorganic-organic film-substrate interaction to biotic-abiotic interface.
