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Minoru Taya

  • Professor Emeritus, Mechanical Engineering
  • Adjunct Professor, School of Oral Science

Biography

After PhD from Northwestern University, Taya jointed University of Delaware as Assistant Professor, then promoted to Associate professor. Then he joined University of Washington, ME Department, promoted to Full Professor in 1989, Then he moved to Tohoku University, Department of Materials Processing as full professor, returning back to UW ME department in 1991. During 1986, He took a sabbatical leave at University of Oxford under Royal Society Senior Guest Fellow. He is running Center for Intelligent Materials and Systems as Director since 2000.

He wrote three monograph books: (i) Metal matrix composite by Taya and Arsenault, Pergamon Press, 1989 (ii) Electronic composites, Cambridge University Press, 2005 and (iii) Bioinspired active and sensing materials, by Taya, Van Volkenburgh, Mizunami and Nomura, Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Specializations

Design of active and sensing materials and their integrated robotics (both macro- and nano-level) , design of FePd nanohelix nanorobotics , shape memory alloys, hierarchical modeling of materials including composites ( down to molecular dynamics model) and bioinspired material design. Soft robotics, Cancer treatment based on FePd nanohelix robotics, energy-harvesting/storage materials.

Affiliations

Education

  • BS in Engineering, 1968
    University of Tokyo
  • MS in Civil Engineering
    Northwestern University
  • PhD in Theoretical Applied Mechanics
    Northwestern University