EunBi.

Materials scientist working on soft materials for robotics and bioengineering. Senior materials scientist at Elysium Robotics in Austin; PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern.

Background

I'm a polymer / soft-materials scientist trying to make the materials that move soft robots and biomimetic devices actually work outside the lab. I design dielectric polymer and electrode systems, 3D-print them into architected lattices, and study how composition, geometry, and process together govern what the resulting material can do — sense, rectify current, actuate, or steer cells.

I'm currently senior materials scientist at Elysium Robotics, a deep-tech startup in Austin where I work on dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) — improving their actuation strain and energy density, and building composition-to-performance models that link formulation and processing to actuator behavior. Before that I spent four years as a postdoc with Ryan Truby at Northwestern, working on 3D printing of poly(ionic liquid) composites, ionogels, and architected electrolytes for soft sensors.

I'm also an AI Fellow with Handshake, evaluating large language models on reasoning and data synthesis in chemistry and materials science in collaboration with one of the top AI research labs.

Research interests

  • Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) and electro-active polymer composites for soft robotics
  • 3D printing of soft materials — ink rheology, voxel-level control, architected lattices
  • Poly(ionic liquid) composites with spatially programmable mechanical and electrical properties
  • Biomimetic hydrogels for directing and confining cellular migration
  • Electrochemical lithography for combinatorial discovery of nanoscale materials
  • LLM evaluation and use in chemistry / materials science workflows

Education

Northwestern University
Ph.D. in Chemistry · 2021 · Mirkin Research Lab
Multi-Scale Functional Structure Engineering with Soft Materials
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.S. in Chemistry, Honors · 2015 · Cahoon Research Lab

Recent recognition

  • NextProf Nexus 2025 — UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech
  • IIN 3 Minute Thesis Competition Visionary Award — Northwestern University (2024)
  • IIN Outstanding Researcher Award — Northwestern University (2024)
  • ACS CAS Future Leaders Top 100 — American Chemical Society (2024)
  • ACS PMSE Future Faculty Scholar — American Chemical Society (2023)

Full list of awards, presentations, and patents lives in the CV.