If Jun Yao knows one thing about research, it’s to keep an open mind. 

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From his early days as a PhD student to his current role as associate professor in UMass Amherst’s Riccio College of Engineering, Yao has found that many of his greatest discoveries have emerged from pure serendipity. 

Yao also knows that research is a lot like his favorite lifelong hobby of fishing: “Most of the time, it’s boring; you stand there waiting for hours. But if you stick with it, eventually a fish is going to bite—you’ll make that great discovery that makes the struggles and tedium all worth it.”

Yao’s persistence and open-mindedness have paid off many times over. Since joining the UMass Amherst Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2017, his research at the boundary of electronics and biological systems has resulted in the development of several remarkable technologies—from a generator that can harvest clean electricity from humidity in the air, to devices that can sniff out disease, monitor body signals, or enhance human performance. Yao’s research takes inspiration from biological designs to create advanced electronic devices that can ultimately interface more effectively with the human body.

In recognition of his research contributions, Yao has been honored with the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Trailblazer Award, both in 2022, as well as a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2019, among others. From UMass, he has received a Manning/IALS Innovation Award, an Armstrong Fund for Science Award, and a Barbara H. and Joseph I. Goldstein Outstanding Junior Faculty Award from the College of Engineering.

Serendipitous Connections

Yao was born and raised in the Chinese countryside, about 50 miles from Shanghai. He earned both his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and his master’s degree in physics from Fudan University in Shanghai before coming to the United States for his PhD in applied physics at Rice University. While Yao’s path has been circuitous, jumping across disciplines and between practical and theoretical work, he now realizes how valuable this interdisciplinary training has been for his research.

After earning his PhD, Yao worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University on engineering with silicon nanowires—an inorganic, man-made material produced using a special furnace. Once he joined the faculty at UMass, Yao intended to continue this work but found that the task of setting up this furnace—which would release toxic gases—was extremely complicated and time-consuming. Lacking the silicon nanowire materials for his research, he set off on a different path. While interviewing at UMass, Yao had met Derek Lovley (today, emeritus faculty), a microbial ecologist who discovered and studied Geobacter, a bacteria with many unique properties, including the ability to produce tiny electrically conductive protein nanowires. [Read more about Yao and Lovley’s collaboration in this story.]

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The two researchers joined their individual expertise to carry out several productive and innovative collaborations. Initially, they planned to use the protein nanowires to create a sensor that could detect humidity. But one day, a PhD student working in the lab forgot to plug in power for the device, and the researchers realized that the device still gave an electrical signal. That serendipitous discovery led to the creation of the Air-gen, an air-powered generator that connects protein nanowires produced by Geobacter to electrodes in order to harvest electricity from water vapor naturally present in the air. Yao and Lovley first reported on this discovery in Nature in February 2020 and, the same year, won the Armstrong Fund for Science Award to support scaling up their invention for practical applications. In 2025, Yao received a $1.5 million NSF award to continue scaling this work in hopes of eventually commercializing it.
 

Above, a bioinspired biochip developed in Yao's lab for capturing bioelectrical signals in living tissue.

From Electronic Noses to Artificial Neurons

Following the invention of the Air-gen, Yao and Lovley developed several other technologies using protein nanowires from Geobacter. In 2022, they announced in Nature Communications that they had engineered a biofilm—a layer of cells about the thickness of a sheet of paper—that could “plug in” to sweat on the surface of skin, converting the energy locked in evaporation to power small wearable devices. And in 2023, they published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics about the invention of an “electronic nose,” which—using protein nanowires—could “sniff out” a vast array of chemical tracers. They envision this device could one day detect medical conditions like asthma and kidney disease.

More recently, Yao has led groundbreaking research, published in Nature Communications in 2025, using protein nanowires to develop an extremely energy-efficient artificial neuron, inspired by the human brain. Once again, this technology emerged from a fortuitous discovery that the conductance of a device called memristor made from protein nanowires switched at a threshold of 60 millivolts—the exact signal amplitude used by the human brain for computation. 

“Things clicked for us, and we saw an opportunity to harness this signal to create an artificial neuron closer to what we have in the brain,” explains Yao. “We designed a circuit that is the first capable of interfacing directly with biological cells.”

In the future, Yao says, “There is hope that we can connect many of these artificial neurons together, opening the door to powerful, vastly more efficient computing systems, as well as medical devices that can plug directly into the body.”

Yao is also developing tissue-like electronics using two-dimensional materials such as graphene. Working with collaborators at MIT, he has built an extremely thin, porous, and flexible electronic “mesh” with graphene sensors, which can be seamlessly embedded into human tissue. In research published in Nature Communications, they demonstrated that this artificial tissue can measure both the mechanical and electrical function of cells in lab-grown human cardiac tissue, and it can grow along with the cardiac cells. This type of engineered “cyborg” tissue could one day allow for new types of comprehensive health monitoring, as well as other novel biomedical applications, such as controlling prosthetics. 

Reflecting on his career to date, Yao says he’s proud of having “survived” the struggles, doubt, and fear he faced when moving to a new country and embarking on a career in academia. But he is equally grateful for the opportunities he has found to learn, grow, and stumble upon moments of serendipity.  

As for his future plans, Yao says he’s keeping his mind open to whatever “fish” may bite next. 

“You don’t know exactly when and where the next fish is. But I often tell my students that research is mostly about having the right mindset, so we can learn and grab opportunities when they arise,” says Yao. 

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