Shaochen Chen

Dr. Chen is a Professor and Pearlie D. Henderson Centennial Endowed Faculty Fellow in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UT-Austin. He received the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. His primary research interests include:

• Nanofabrication for energy, medicine, and sustainability,
• Biomaterials, biomedical devices, and nanomedicine,
• Biofuels including bioreactor design, thermal/fluid transport, and optical engineering,
• Nanophotonics and solar energy harvesting,
• Laser engineering including femtosecond laser processing and ultrafast heat transfer

Dr. Chen has a good track record for developing well-funded research programs with funding from NIH, NSF, DoD, ONR, AFOSR, American Heart Association, Texas Instruments, Intel, and IBM. His group has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications and filed more than 10 patents/provisional patents. Three of the patents were licensed to CardioSpectra, Inc. and later acquired by Volcano Corporation (NASDAQ:VOLC).

Among his numerous awards, Dr. Chen received the NSF CAREER award in 2001 for cutting-edge research in laser nano-scale processing of biodegradable polymers. This work is leading to the development of degradable polymeric micro- and nano-devices for cellular and molecular therapeutics. In 2004, Dr. Chen received the Young Investigator award from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for his work on nanocomposites with unique optical, thermal, and chemical properties. His lab has developed innovative three-dimensional, multi-functional micro and nanostructures with a gradient of material composition and topography, leading to applications for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and optical cloaking. His work about surface plasmons and its application for nanolithography has won the Best Paper Award of AIAA Thermophysics Conference in 2006. Several technical magazines such as “Laser Focus World,” “Nanotechnologie News, (Germany)” “R & D Magazine,” “Photonics Spectra,” “Design News Online” and “C-NET News,” reported on his research work.

As an active member in his professional community, Dr. Chen was elected Fellow of ASME in 2007 and Fellow of SPIE in 2008. Currently he serves as the Associate Editor for Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology and ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering. He is also on the editorial board of journals including Nanomedicine, Biofabrication, and The Open Materials Science Journal.