Board of Trustees Names ECE’s Jun Yao the Armstrong Professional Development Professor

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The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees has named Associate Professor Jun Yao of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department as the newest Armstrong Professional Development Professor. The trustees award the professorship for a three-year period to a faculty member who is at the beginning of his or her career and has demonstrated substantial achievement and great promise in the areas of teaching and research.

Previous recipients of the Armstrong professorship include Provost Professor Shelly Peyton of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, Professor David McLaughlin of the ECE department, Distinguished Professor Erin Baker of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, and Associate Professor Colin Gleason of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.

Among other awards and distinctions, Yao is the recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2019), a UMass Manning/IALS Innovation Award (2019), a UMass Armstrong Fund for Science Award (2020), a Sony Innovation Faculty Award (2021), the Riccio College of Engineering Barbara H. & Joseph J. Goldstein Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2020-21), the National Institutes of Health Trailblazer R21 Award (2022), and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2022). He was also selected as one of the UMass Spotlight Scholars (2026). 

Yao, who is also an adjunct of the Biomedical Engineering Department, heads the Yao research group, an interdisciplinary lab working at the boundary between electronics and biosystems. As Yao explains, “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 with biosystems for improved detection, diagnosis, and communication.”

One of Yao’s most publicized discoveries involves the use of protein nanowires—nanofilaments synthesized by the microbe Geobacter sulfurreducens that can serve as nanoscale “cables” to do charge/information exchange with environments—to fabricate electronic devices. The nanowires are electrically conductive and produced from renewable feedstock, generating a new “green” electronic material. Subsequently, Yao’s lab has been developing various green electronics made from these protein nanowires. In 2020 Yao and his colleagues received a $1.47-million award from the NSF to explore the potential of making electronics from these synthetic materials. 

“For example,” as Yao explains, “we have discovered that they can be used to make an energy device called ‘Air-gen’ that continuously harvests electricity from the ambient humidity, leading to the potential of new green energy technology.” 

In that context, in 2025 Yao and two colleagues obtained a $1.5-million award from the NSF to develop this new kind of technology. As Yao explains, “Moisture in the air can carry electricity, as demonstrated by the lightning we see during a thunderstorm. This means that power can be retrieved anytime, anywhere, without relying on the sun, wind, or even a battery.” See NSF Grants ECE’s Jun Yao and Two Colleagues $1.5-million Award to Harvest Clean Energy from Thin Air.

According to Yao, “The broader impacts of this project include applying the developed technologies to clinical settings such as aging and Alzheimer’s care, promoting technology transfer for commercialization, and creating educational opportunities to help enhance public awareness of the critical role that science- and technology-driven innovation plays in the development of sustainable solutions.”

Yao and his team have also been developing biomimetic bioelectronics. One example is a type of tissue-like mesh electronics that emulates the nerve networks infiltrating muscles. Because the mesh can grow alongside cardiac cells without disrupting their natural development, it enables continuous monitoring of both the mechanical and electrical functions of cells in lab-grown human cardiac tissue. This engineered "cyborg" tissue could one day enable new forms of comprehensive health monitoring and support a range of novel biomedical applications, including the control of advanced prosthetic devices.  

Such research and various other groundbreaking discoveries have enabled Yao and his team to accumulate a remarkable number of papers published in high-leverage scientific journals such as Nature 578, 550–554 (2020). These publications include several Nature Communications papers: Nature Commun 16, 8599 (2025); Nature Commun. 15, 2321 (2024); Nature Commun. 13, 4369 (2022); Nature Commun. 12, 3351 (2021); Nature Commun. 11, 1861 (2020); and Nature Commun. 9, 5161 (2018). Beyond those, Yao and his team have published in several other prestigious journals such as Science Adv. 8, eabn2485 (2022), Adv. Mater. 36, 2300748 (2023), and Adv. Mater., 2207133 (2023). 

Yao earned his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Rice University and his M.S. in Physics and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. (July 2026)