Rate My Professor Yuhang Chen

Professor Yuhang Chen is Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, affiliated with the Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering. She joined Heriot-Watt University in March 2012 as an Assistant Professor and has progressed to her current position. Yuhang received her B.Eng. in Mechanics from Tongji University, China, in 2007, and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sydney in 2011. She subsequently held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Sydney from 2011 to 2012 and served as a visiting scholar in civil engineering at Johns Hopkins University, USA, in 2012.

Her research focuses on experimental and computational mechanics and their applications in multiphasic and multiscale heterogeneous materials in biomedical engineering, including tissue scaffolds, soft and hard tissue mechanics, and mechanics of cancer. Her interdisciplinary research at the interface of engineering, materials science, and biomedicine includes projects on multiscale mechanics and morphology in soft tissue cancers, solid and fluidic characterizations for microstructures of porous materials, release mechanism and microstructural modeling/design of biodegradable systems, structural optimization in size, shape, and topology, mechanobiology, cell mechanics, and computational tissue engineering. Relevant keywords include mechanical engineering and machinery, biomedical engineering, human health, functional materials, tissue mechanics, tissue engineering, bioengineering, cancer mechanics, multiscale modeling, and computational mechanics. Her contributions support UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and 14 (Life Below Water). Professor Chen has 46 research outputs, including 35 articles, 4 conference contributions, 2 chapters, and 2 papers. Recent publications feature "Abnormality detection in soft tissues: Multivariate outlier framework based on multi mechanical characterization using indentation" (2026, Medical Engineering & Physics), "Design of novel non-periodic biomimetic bone scaffolds using the Moving Morphable Components method" (2025, Materials and Design), "Development and mechanical characterisation of an animal model of acute compartment syndrome" (2025, Acta Biomaterialia), "FBG-based Force Sensing Gripper in Minimally Invasive Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery" (2025, Proceedings of SPIE), and "MC1R determines healing outcomes in acute and chronic cutaneous wounds" (2025, PNAS).