Liwei Lin (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Liwei Lin

Lin Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

BPN955: AI-Powered Nanoplasmonic Biosensing

Kamyar Behrouzi
2024

Access to affordable and user-friendly biosensors is crucial for advancing global healthcare. While lateral flow immunoassays have been the primary solution for decades, their limited sensitivity and suboptimal sample utilization present challenges. This project represents a systematic progression towards developing economically viable biosensors with heightened sensitivity, covering a range of diseases from viral infections to cancer. By integrating nanoplasmonics to induce visually perceptible signals and harnessing the coffee ring effect for protein pre-concentration, we achieved...

BPN992: Sensing and Actuation Applications Using Lithium Niobate PMUTs

Wei Yue
Megan Teng
2024

Sensing, actuation and imaging applications based on ultrasounds could expand to many applications by means of miniaturization and low power consumption via MEMS fabrication technologies. Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducers (PMUTs) with thin film designs have emerged as key commercial products but current state-of-art PMUTs are limited by the acoustic power/pressure for applications within a limited range by using AlN as the piezoelectrical material due to its process compatibility with microelectronics. One BSAC industrial member has developed a process to make PMUT devices...

BPN941: Ultrasound-Induced Haptic Interface

Fan Xia
Wei Yue
2024

The next big thing, AR/VR, requires an immersive Human Machine Interface (HMI) in addition to visual and sound stimuli. Although skin is the biggest organ in the human body, very few efforts compared to visual and auditory senses have been done to develop a “sense of touch”. The mechanical stimulus to generate the touch sense by the embedded mechanoreceptors in the skin at different depths has been created in many ways as vibratory actuators, microneedles, etc. In this project, we are investigating to create haptic interface via radiation force generated by piezoelectric...

Wei Yue

Graduate Student Researcher
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Liwei Lin (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2026 (Anticipated)

Wei Yue received his B.S. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Peking University in 2021. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. in MEMS/Nano in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Liwei Lin.

Fan Xia

Graduate Student Researcher
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Liwei Lin (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2026 (Anticipated)

Ultrafast Biomimetic Untethered Soft Actuators with Bone-In-Flesh Constructs Actuated by Magnetic Field

Wei Yue
Renxiao Xu
Fanping Sui
Yuan Gao
Liwei Lin
2024

Soft actuators with unique mechanics have gained significant interests for unique capabilities and versatile applications. However, their actuation mechanisms (usually driven by light, heat, or chemical reactions) result in long actuation times. Reported magnetically actuated soft actuators can produce rapid and precise motions, yet their complex manufacturing processes may constrain their range of applications. Here, the “bone-in-flesh” is proposed that constructs combining rigid magnetic structures encapsulated within soft polymers to create untethered magnetic soft actuators. This...

Lin Lab: Researchers Design Soft Actuators that Mimic ‘bone-in-flesh’ Structure of Human Limbs

May 28, 2024

Past generations of soft actuators — designed to respond to light, heat and chemical reactions — typically exhibited slow actuation times and limited precision. Newer magnetically controlled soft actuators perform better in these areas, but they are challenging to manufacture. Ferromagnetic particles with controlled directional magnetization must be embedded into the actuator’s polymer skin, a process that requires specialized 3D printers and lithography techniques.

Now, Lin’s team may have solved this issue. Using their bone-in-flesh design, the...

Nikita Lukhanin

Graduate Student Researcher
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Liwei Lin (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2028 (Anticipated)

Nikita Lukhanin is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in MEMS at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to this, he obtained a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois as well as an A.S. in Engineering Science from College of DuPage.

BSAC's Best: Spring 2024 Awards Announced

March 29, 2024

BSAC would like to thank all of the researchers who presented their research during BSAC's Spring 2024 Research Review on March 20th.

BSAC Industrial Members voted for the outstanding paper and presentations and the results are in. Please join BSAC in congratulating the recipients of the Spring 2024 Best of BSAC honors, Fan Xia and Noelle Davis!

Outstanding Presenter...

Ryan Sochol

Alumni
Professor Liwei Lin (Advisor)
PostDoc 2014

Prof. Ryan D. Sochol received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2006, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009 and 2011, respectively, with Doctoral Minors in Bioengineering and Public Health. Prof. Sochol’s postdoctoral training spanned the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, the University of California, Berkeley, and...