Laboratory of Biological and
Bio-inspired Materials
Materials Science and Engineering
@ University of Pennsylvania
News
2024.01 – Our group is moving to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Pennsylvania. The new group website will be updated soon. For information regarding graduate and postdoc openings, please email Dr. Li at lzli/at/seas/dot/upenn/dot/edu.
2023.06 – Prof. Li is promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
2023.05 – Congrats to Dr. Deng and Dr. Chen again!
2023.05 – Hongshun successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation! Congratulations.
2023.05 – Congratulations to the STARFISH team who won the first place of the MSE senior design this year!
2023.05 – Nick successfully defended his Master’s dissertation! All the best for your future career!
2023.04 – Dr. Li gave an invited seminar at the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Tech. Thanks so much for the invitation, Saad!
2023.04 – Together with Dr. Daniel Speiser and Dr. Daniel Baum, we are awarded with an HFSP research award! More to come on living armor materials!
2023.03 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk at the ACS2023 Meeting. Congratulations to Joanna Aizenberg for the ACS Award in Colloid Chemistry! Great to catch up with many Aizenberg lab members.
2023.03 – Dr. Li’s group members Hongshun, Zhifei, Chenhao, and Shahbaz gave four talks and two posters at TMS2023 Annual Meeting!
2023.03 – Yiming successfully defended her Master’s dissertation! Congratulations!
2023.01 – Dr. Li participated the International Workshop on Biodiversity and Bioinspiration held at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei. Amazing nature, amazing people, and amazing workshop! Thanks so much for the kind invitation, Dr. Rolf Mueller!
2022.01 – Dr. Li gave an invited seminar at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at National University of Singapore. It was great to be back and meet with mentors, colleagues, and friends!
2022.12 – Zhifei Successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation! Congrats, Dr. Zhifei Deng!
2022.11 – Group dinner at Spicity! Happy Holidays!
2022.10 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk at MS&T2022.
2022.12 – Our latest work on the structure and mechanics of the natural ceramic foams from sea urchin spines has been published in Nature Communications! See VT news here.
2022.09 – Group members Chenhao and Liuni participated the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Biomineralization held in Spain! Chenhao and Liuni each presented a poster on their projects, and also helped present Zhifei's project on natural wear-resistant materials.
2022.09 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk at the MH22 Conference (Singapore).
2022.07 – Dr. Li participated the workshop "Engineered Materials and Manufacturing for Sustainable Built Environment" held at University of Buffalo and gave an invited talk. Thanks so much for the kind invitation, Dr. Ren, and the kind support from NSF!
2022.07 – Together with Dr. Cassie Stoddard from Princeton University, our team organized an outreach program named "Eggxtreme Bird Eggs" through the Black Engineering Excellence at Virginia Tech (BEE VT). A lot of fun with eggs and biological materials in general!
2022.05 – Our exhibit "Starfish armor" is now open at the Science Museum of Western Virginia! Through virtual reality programs, 3D and 2D displays, we hope to get more visitors, especially the children and young people, inspired by the fascinating biological materials in our planet! See VT news here.
2022.05 – Dr. Li is named as the Mary V. Jones Faculty Fellow!
2022.05 – Dr. Li received the 2022 College of Engineering Dean’s Award – Faculty Fellow. Congratulations to all the award winners!
2022.04 – Zhifei won the Best Poster Award in the Walter O’Brien ME Graduate Student Poster Symposium. Congratulations to Zhifei and all the group members who have contributed with great posters!
2022.04 – Dr. Li visited the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute at Johns Hopkins University and gave an invited talk. Thanks so much for the kind invitation, Dr. Kang.
2022.04 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk at the Materials Thrust Spring Workshop at VT.
2022.03 – Dr. Li gave a guest lecture for the Biomaterials and Bioenergy class in the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials at VT.
2022.03 – Li Group participated the 2022 TMS Annual Meeting. Li gave an invited talk on Biomineralized nanocomposites. Zhifei and Shahbaz gave oral presentations and posters on their projects.
2022.02 – Our new paper on the dual-scale, single-crystalline microlattice in starfish skeletons is out in Science with cover highlight! Our team included Ling, Ting, Hongshun, Zian, Zhifei, Liuni, James Weaver (Harvard), and Emily Peterman (Bowdoin).
In this work, we revealed that the porous ossicles of the knobby starfish, Protoreaster nodosus, are composed of a diamond-triply periodic minimal surface geometry with a lattice constant ~30 um, the [111] direction of which is aligned with the c-axis of the constituent calcite at the atomic scale. This dual-scale crystallographically coaligned microlattice, which exhibits lattice-level structural gradients and dislocations, combined with the atomic-level conchoidal fracture behavior of biogenic calcite, substantially enhances the damage tolerance of this hierarchical biological microlattice, thus providing important insights for designing synthetic architected cellular solids.
See VT News, NSF highlights, ScienceDaily, Yahoo News.
2022.02 – Our sister review article “Biomineralized Materials as Model Systems for Structural Composites: Intracrystalline Structural Features and Their Strengthening and Toughening Mechanisms” has been accepted in Advanced Sciences!
“The mineral building blocks in biomineralized composites exhibit various intracrystalline structural features, such as organic inclusions, trace elements, varying crystalline features, residual stress/strain, and twinning, which significantly modifies the mechanical properties of biogenic minerals. This review discusses recent progress in elucidating the intracrystalline structural features of three common biomineral systems (calcite, aragonite, and hydroxyapatite) and their corresponding mechanical significance.”
2022.02 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk in VT BEAM.
2022.01 – Ting started her post-doc position at Dr. Ming Dao’s group at MIT. All the best, Ting!
2021.12 – Dr. Li talked about biological and bio-inspired materials at IEEE Soft Robotics Podcast. See the link here.
2021.12 – Our latest review article "Biomineralized materials as model systems for structural composites: 3D architecture" has been accepted in Advanced Materials!
Biomineralized load-bearing materials, which are intrinsically three-dimensional composites, have been widely used as model systems for developing novel structural materials with improved mechanical performance. In this review article, we present recent progress in understanding the 3D architectural design of biomineralized composites and the current knowledge and emerging approaches to investigate the formation-3D structure-mechanical property-biomimetics relationship.
2021.12 – Our work on the structural basis of black drum fish teeth for achieving the mollusk-crushing function has been recently published in Acta Biomaterialia! The black drum tooth enameloid is one of the stiffest biological materials! We would like to thank all the collaborators who contributed to this work!
2021.12 – Check out our new work on bulk ceramic/metal composites fabricated through ceramic 3D printing combined with centrifugal metal casting. The paper has been just published in Advanced Engineering Materials.
2021.12 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk at 2021 MRS Fall Meeting with the title: Bioceramic Cellular Solids: Structure, Mechanics, and Formation. Great thanks to the symposium organizers for the kind invitation!
2021.11 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk on natural structural materials at the 3M NTFA symposium.
2021.11 – Dr. Li gave a guest lecture to ASME Virginia Section on natural and biomimetic materials. Thanks so much for the kind invitation, Rusty!
2021.11 – Dr. Li gave a guest lecture on biological and bio-inspired functional materials to engineering students at Johns Hopkins University! Thanks for the invitation to be part of the course, Dr. Kang!
2021.10 – Welcome our new undergraduate researchers: Max Moore, Ben Fielder, Sam Harkness, and new Masters student, Nick Roth!
2021.10 – Dr. Li gives an invited talk on natural structural materials at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Thanks so much for the host, Dr. Kolle!
2021.09 – Dr. Li gives a seminar talk at the Engineering Research Seminar for engineering freshmen. It’s great to see all the new faces and glad to have many interests in biological and bio-inspired materials.
2021.09 – Dr. Li gives a talk at SEAS, Harvard on colloidal assemblies. Thanks so much for the invitation, Prof. Aizenberg! It's great to see all the friends and colleagues!
2021.09 – Our new paper in elucidating the underlying mechanisms for the crystallographically-preferred growth of evaporation-induced colloidal assembly is published in PNAS! In this study, we showed that the preferred <110> growth in the fcc colloidal crystals synthesized through evaporation-induced assembly is achieved through a gradual crystallographic rotation facilitated by mechanical stress-induced geometrically necessary dislocations. As crystallographic texture is also very common in atomic crystals and natural biominerals, such as eggshells and mollusk shells, the mechanisms revealed in this work may provide further insights into these systems.
Check the Harvard News on this work: Crystal Clear.
2021.08 – The Li lab had a great party, celebrating Ting’s graduation and farewell, welcoming new group members, and start of a new in-person semester!
2021.08 – We welcome our new Ph.D. student, Yang Geng!
2021.06 – Our new collaborative paper investigating the microstructural design for mechanical–optical multifunctionality in the exoskeleton of the flower beetle Torynorrhina flammea is published in PNAS! In this work, we demonstrate that a micropillar-reinforced photonic multilayer in the beetle’s exoskeleton simultaneously enhances mechanical robustness and optical appearance, giving rise to optical damage tolerance. In addition, our systematic structural analysis of T. flammea’s different color polymorphs and parametric optical and mechanical modeling further suggest that this unique microarchitecture may be optimized toward maximizing optical properties rather than its mechanical performance.
For more details, check out these articles: VT News, Phys.Org, SCIENMAG, EurekAlert, and Nanowerk.
2021.05 – Congratulations to Ting, who has successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation!
Congratulations, Dr. Yang!
2021.03 – Dr. Li gave an invited talk on biomineralized lightweight materials at TMS 2021 virtual meeting in the symposium on biomaterials.
2021.03 – Hongshun and Zian both attended the APS March meeting and gave online presentations about their research on sponges and beetle skeletons! Nice work!
Together with Dr. Kenneth Park and Prof. Sung Kang, Dr. Li organized and chaired the session "Physics of Bio-inspired Materials".
2020.12 – Our collaborative work on bio-inspired lightweight multifunctional structures has been accepted in Advanced Engineering Materials and featured as the back cover!
2020.12 – Zhifei and Zian both attended the MRS Fall meeting and gave online presentations about their research on fish teeth and eggshells!
2020.11 – Congrats to Liuni who just passed her qualification exam!
2020.12 – Welcome our new undergraduate researchers: Hayley Capilitan, Nick Roth, and Zhaowei Guo!
2020.11 – Our recent work on the intrinsic mechanical properties of biogenic minerals has been published in Nature Communications!
See VT News here.
2020.10 – Our collaborative work on the synthesis and chemical conversion of functional nanocomposites has been accepted in Advanced Materials.
2020.10 – Together with the Stoddard lab from Princeton University, our group is awarded with a new grant award from AFOSR. This project will focus on the engineering and evolution of avian eggshells.
2020.10 – Our collaborative work on the synthesis of bio-inspired guanine micoplatelets has been accepted in Chemistry - A European Journal and featured as a Front Cover and "Hot Paper" article.
2020.10 – Our collaborative work on the computational analysis of cuttlebone-inspired multifunctional lightweight panels has been accepted in Advanced Functional Materials and featured in Back Cover.
2020.09 – Our new paper investigating the mechanical design of the lightweight porous skeleton in cuttlefish (cuttlebone) is published in PNAS! This work integrates approaches such as quantitative 3D structural analysis, in-situ mechanical characterization, and parametric structural and mechanical modeling, which reveals that the "wall-septa" design of cuttlebone is to induce compression-dominated deformation, controlled asymmetric wall fracture and densification. This allows the cuttlebone to achieve simultaneous high stiffness and energy absorption capability.
For more details, check out these articles: PNAS "In This Issue" highlight, VT News, Phys.Org, ScienceDaily, EurekAlert, and ScienMag.
2020.08 – Welcome new group members, Edward Lee, Yiming Tan, and Chenhao Hu as Masters students.
2020.07 – Ling participated and chaired sessions in the Faraday Discussion: Biological and Bio-inspired Optics.
2020.05 –Our paper on rational design of photonic microbricks via crack engineering is highlighted as a frontpiece article in Advanced Functional Materials. This work is highlighted as the Frontispiece Cover. See link.
Congratulations to the team and our collaborators!
2020.07 - Dr. Li received the prestigious 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award! Congratulations!
2020.05 – NEW MEMBERS
Liuni joins the group as a graduate student! Welcome to group again!
2020.05 – HIGHLIGHT
New highlight about Dr. Li’s MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators under 35 China Award.
See link.
2020.04 – AWARD
Zhifei has been accepted to the 2020 Virtual National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering. Congratulations!
2020.04 – HIGHLIGHT
Our work on chiton-inspired flexible armor has been highlighted in Scientific American. Congratulations to the team!
See link.
2020.03 – AWARD
Hongshun has received a Winter 2020 Travel Fund Program (TFP) Award from the Virginia Tech. Congratulations!
2020.03 – PUBLICATION
Hongshun's paper on the quantitative analysis of the porous stereom structures from echinoderms is accepted for publication in Acta Biomaterialia! Congrats to the team!
2020.02 – PUBLICATION
Ting’s paper on the quantitative analysis method of the porous stereom structures from echinoderms is accepted for publication in Acta Biomaterialia! Congrats to the team!
2020.02 – WORKSHOP
Dr. Li gave a talk at the Workshop on Bioinspiration and Biodiversity organized by Dr. Rolf Mueller from VT at North Carolina A&T State University.
2020.02 – AWARD
Dr. Li receives the prestigious ICTAS Junior Faculty Award!
2020.01 – AWARD
Ling received the NSF CAREER Award! Congratulations!
2020.01 – NEW MEMBERS
We welcome our new undergraduate researchers, Chenhao Hu, Amy Kim, and Ross Williams!
2019.12 – CONFERENCE
Dr. Li’s group attended the 8th International Conference on Mechanics of Biomaterials and Tissues with two talks and one poster from Hongshun and Zhifei.
2019.12 – AWARD
Ling won the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators under 35 China Award. Congratulations!
2019.12 – PUBLICATION
Our new work on biological and bio-inspired flexible scaled armor has been published in Nature Communications. Congrats to the team and particularly Ting and Zhifei!
Link to the article.
2019.12 – VT NEWS
Our work on biological and bio-inspired flexible scaled armor has been highlighted by VT news.
See link.
2019.12 – MEDIA REPORTS
Our work on biological and bio-inspired flexible scaled armor has been highlighted in multiple news outlets:
Phys.org: Chiton mollusk provides model for new armor design
Science Daily: Innovative New Scale Armor Design Inspired by Chiton Mollusk
Lab Manager: Chiton Mollusk Provides Model for New Armor Design
Nature Asia: Materials: Molluscs inspire flexible armour
EurekAlert!: Chiton mollusk provides model for new armor design
2019.12 – PUBLICATION
Our new work on fabrication of photonic microbricks has been published in Advanced Functional Materials!
Link to the article.
2019.09 – FELLOWSHIP
Congratulations to Zhifei for receiving the Pratt fellowship from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
2019.08 – NSF INTERN GRANT
Congratulations to the lab for receiving a new NSF INTERN grant!