• Tissue-like Mesh Electronics

    Electronics are seamlessly integrated into biological tissue for close monitoring, diagnosis, and engineering hybrid living system.

  • ‘Greener’ Energy Harvesting

    ‘Air-Gen’ device made from microbial protein nanowires can continuously harvest electricity from ambient air. A video explaining “Air-gen’ can be found below.

  • Bio-inspired Neuromorphic Devices

    Memristor made from microbial protein nanowires yields both functional emulation and parameter matching to biological brain function.  More details can be found here.

  • Green Wearable Electronics

    Bioelectronic sensors made from microbial protein nanowires feature high sensitivity, flexibility and bio-compatibility for a new generation of ‘green’ electronics. See examples here and here.

  • 3D Biosensor

    3D structural engineering in nanowires may yield cellular resolution biosensors.

Recent Research Highlights

Air-Gen for clean electricity from thin air, 24/7: In our recent study, we discovered and invented a class of generic Air-Gen devices that can continuously harvest electricity from ambient air. See other News highlights (BBC, Washington Post, Guardian, Boston Global, Yahoo, etc). 

Microbial biofilms efficiently convert ambient water evaporation into electricity. 

Microbial factory is used to design electronic protein nanowires for making 'green' sensors

A 3D nanosensor can detect both bioelectrical and biomechanical activities in biological cells.

Memristor device works with ultralow signal amplitude similar to that in a biological cell.

WELCOME TO YAO LAB AT UMASS AMHERST

We are an interdisciplinary lab working at the boundary between electronics and biosystems. On the one hand, we learn and borrow from biological designs to construct electronic sensors, devices, and integrated systems that are more biomimetic and efficient. On the other hand, we harness these developed electronics in turn to create a better interface to biosystems for improved detection, diagnosis, and communication. More details can be found here.

Latest group updates

2024-07-25 Congratulations to Hongyan Gao for the successful PhD thesis defense.

2024-03-06 Hongyan Gao’s work “Graphene-Integrated Mesh Electronics with Converged Multifunctionality for Tracking Multimodal Excitation-Contraction Dynamics in Cardiac Microtissues” is formally accepted by Nature Communications.

2024-02-28 Tianda Fu & Shuai Fu’s work “Enabling Reliable Two-terminal Memristor Network by Exploiting the Dynamic Reverse Recovery in a Diode Selector” is formally accepted by Device journal of Cell publisher.

2023-11-03 Congratulations to Xiaomeng Liu for the successful PhD thesis defense.

2023-10-05 Congratulations to Tianda Fu for the successful PhD thesis defense.

Position available

We are recruiting a PhD candidate for upcoming Spring/Fall 2025 in the field of Bioelectronics. Students holding B.S./M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Physics or other related fields are encouraged to contact Prof. Yao.

We are also looking for a possible Postdoc candidate, who holds PhD degree related to Tissue engineering, Organoid/cell culture, Bioengineering. Interested candidate may contact Prof. Yao for more details.

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