Jacobs Executive Committee
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Lining Yao is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, directing the Morphing Matter Lab. Dr. Yao received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab in 2017. She was a faculty member at the Human-Computer Interaction Insititute, School of Computer Science, CMU from 2017 to 2023. She is the co-founder of the MorphingMatter4Girls Initiative, a Wired UK fellow, an appointed instructor in eco-design by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, a CMU Provost’s Inclusive Teaching Fellow, and a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award.
Lining’s research explores the positive impact of active and morphing materials on sustainable design across different scales and contexts. Her work focuses on discovering and studying morphing material mechanisms, as well as algorithms for computational design and fabrication pipelines. Dr. Yao has published in both computer science and physical science venues and has received nine Best Paper or Best Talk Awards and nominations from premier conferences in Human-Computer Interaction. Her journal papers have been featured as cover stories in Nature, Science Advances, and Advanced Materials Technologies.