Wenzhong Yan, Ph.D. | Mechanical intelligence for soft robots

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Welcome to the homepage of Y Lab!

At UC Davis, Y Lab focuses on the development and deployment of next-generation soft robots and bio-inspired robots that integrate Mechanical Intelligence (MI) with Computational Intelligence (e.g., AI) to tackle critical societal challenges.

Y Lab is led by Dr. Wenzhong Yan (颜文忠), an Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis. Before joining UC Davis, Dr. Yan was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale, working with Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA ECE, working with Ankur Mehta and Jonathan Hopkins.

Dr. Yan recently earned his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from UCLA in June 2023. My research interests broadly include origami and soft robotics, mechanical intelligence, structural instability, computational fabrication, smart materials and structures, and wearable devices.

Dr. Yan is always interested in research collaborations, broadly in the fields of robotics, machine and mechanism design, and advanced manufacturing. Please feel free to reach out by email.

Y Lab welcomes visiting scholars, research interns, and highly motivated students who are interested in soft robotics, bio-inspired robotics, mechanical intelligence, and intelligent robotic systems.

News

04/2026 Very honored to serve as an Associate Editor for Soft Robotics!
03/2026 Officially Prof. Yan, and excited to welcome many friends to visit Davis.
01/2026 Excited to meet friends at GRC Robotics from Jan. 11 to 16 at Ventura, CA.
11/2025 Thrilled to share that I will be joining UC Davis Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering as an assistant professor in March 2026.
11/2025 Our paper, entitled 'Self-Sustainable, Continuous Jumping of a Light-Driven Insect-Scale Soft
Robot', has been published by Advanced Materials.
11/2025 Prof. Daniela Rus visits our lab---Faboratory---at Yale, and I present my new project on amphibious robots
10/2025 Super excited to attend the 2025 NSF FRR-NRI Annual Meeting!
09/2025 Proud to have submitted a paper to ICRA 2026 with my mentee as the first author. 😎
07/2025 Excited to join UC Davis MAE department as a visiting scholar!
07/2025 Honored to serve on the panel to share my faculty job search experience to Ph.D. students and postdoc at Yale!
05/2025 Thank you to the RIT Mechanical Engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
04/2025 Thank you to the University of Washington Mechanical engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
04/2025 Had so much fun talking soft robotics with Sci-fi author Annalee Newitz. Need more soft robot sci-fi stories! 😎
04/2025 Honored to have been nominated as a full member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society!
04/2025 Thank you to the UC Davis Mechanical and Aerospace engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
03/2025 Thrilled to share the next chapter in my journey: I’ve joined The Faboratory at Yale, working with Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio!
02/2025 Thank you to the WPI Robotics engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
02/2025 Thanks, Jiefeng, for inviting me to deliver a guest lecture for the Soft Robotics class at Arizona State University. Really enjoyed the conversations with brilliant students.
01/2025 Thank you to the UW–Madison Mechanical engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
01/2025 Our compact cooling pump (Science, 2024) is gaining attention, with recent mentions in Tech Xplore, AAAS EurekAlert, and others.
12/2024 So inspiring to attend the workshop celebrating Jennifer Lewis at Harvard in honor of Jennifer's 60th birthday! So many fantastic 3D printing technologies.
12/2024 Had so much fun visiting The AI Institute in Boston. Thank you, Dogan, for hosting!
12/2024 Excited to present my work on Adaptive Soft Robots at ISRR. See you in Long Beach from December 8 to 12.
11/2024 Honored to be selected as a finalist for the UCLA Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research.
11/2024 I'll be in Boston from Dec 3 to Dec 7 for MRS 2024. Excited to see y'all!
11/2024 Thrilled to serve on the RSS Pioneers 2025 Organizing Committee. See you in Los Angeles next summer!
10/2024 Our paper, entitled 'A self-regenerative heat pump based on a dual-functional relaxor ferroelectric polymer', has been published online in Science!
9/2024 Thanks Tech Briefs for the interview about my work on contracting-cord particle jamming-based metamaterials. It is highlighted as the top story for over two months.
09/2024 Our work, entitled 'Self-Deployable, Adaptive Soft Robots Based on Contracting-Cord Particle Jamming', is accepted to the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR). See you soon in Long Beach this December.
08/2024 Enjoyed sharing my work at Rice. Thanks Dan for the invitation and showing me the awesome PI lab!
08/2024 Thrilled to give an invited talk at the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute. Thanks Ray for hosting me!
07/2024 Our paper, entitled 'Self-deployable Contracting-cord Metamaterials with Tunable Mechanical Properties,' is published by Materials Horizons and featured on Back Cover. See preprint here.
05/2024 Thanks Vickie and Nick for inviting me to attend the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence!
05/2024 Excited to be selected as a CPS Rising Star. Thank you to the UVA Link Lab.
04/2024 Honored to be selected as an RSS pioneer.
04/2024 Have a wonderful time at RoboSoft 2024 in San Diego.
03/2024 Glad to visit Glaucio Paulino and Aimy Wissa at Princeton University.
03/2024 Enjoy visiting the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory
03/2024 Thrilled to have an invited talk at the Harvard Bertoldi's Group!
02/2024 Thank you to the UConn Electrical and Computer Engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
02/2024 Thank you to the UMass Mechanical and Industrial Engineering for hosting me for a seminar talk!
02/2024 Thrilled to receive the 2024 "Edward K. Rice Outstanding Doctoral Student Award" from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
01/2024 I will be at Robotics GRC from Jan. 14 to 19 at Ventura, CA.
11/2023 Meet lots of (new) friends at my first ever Materials Research Society Fall Meeting & Exhibit in Boston.
11/2023 So much fun to visit Creative Machine Lab and chat with Hod.
10/2023 First time at the Annual Technical Meeting of Society of Engineering Science, Minneapolis.
10/2023 Excited to attend IROS in Detroit.
08/2023 Enjoy visiting Bertoldi's Group at Harvard and discussing so many cool projects.
08/2023 Glad to present at IDETC-CIE 2023 in Boston.
08/2023 A wonderful panel discussion on 'Progress on Origami Engineering' at iCANX platform.
06/2023 Officially become Dr. Yan with my thesis, entitled 'Printable Mechanical Autonomy'.
06/2023 I am honored to have been invited as a speaker on 'Mechanical Intelligence-Enabled Autonomous Compliant Robots' at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UCLA.
05/2023 Present (online) my work at the OrigaBot workshop, ICRA.
04/2023 I am pleased to visit MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory.
04/2023 Honored to give a talk at UPenn GRASP and have a wonderful day talking with faculty members and students.
03/2023 Our work, entitled 'Origami-based integration of robots that sense, decide, and respond' is published in Nature Communications and featured by the editor in Soft Robotics: Sensing, Actuation, and Integration.
09/2022 Proud to be selected as a Rising Star of the Southern California Robotics Symposium.
08/2022 Present at the Gordon Research Conference on Robotics in Ventura, CA.
07/2022 Thrilled to attend Fast Movement Symposium and have great suggestions from Rob, Sangbae, and Elliot on my jumping robots.
07/2022 So much fun to visit brand-new labs of Boyuan and Xiaoyue at Duke.
06/2022 Honor to receive Harry M. Showman prize from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
05/2022 Pleased to showcase 'One Dollar Robots' at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts in Long Beach, CA.
05/2022 First in-person conference after covid and excited to receive the Best Presentation Award at the Soft Robotics workshop, ICRA, Philadelphia.
04/2022 I am delighted to attend (online) the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics in Edinburgh, U.K.
04/2021 Present (online) 'Origami Logic Gates for Printable Robots' at IROS, Prague, Czech Republic.
10/2020 Feel very proud of my first undergraduate mentee, Angela Gao, at UCLA.
10/2019 Prof. Daniela Rus visits our lab, and I present my work on origami robots and have an inspiring discussion.
05/2019 Show Mechanical Logic at the Annual Research Review of UCLA ECE department.
06/2018 I am delighted to present 'Fabrication-aware Design for Furniture with Planar Pieces' at the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication in Boston.