My name is Te Faye Yap. ¹ I’m currently a mechanical engineering PhD student at Rice University advised by Prof. Daniel Preston. My research focuses on studying temperature-dependent reaction kinetics for various phenomena and leveraging our understanding to develop guidelines and new methodologies. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I developed a thermodynamic framework to model the thermal inactivation of viruses to provide decontamination guidelines for safe reuse of personal protective equipment.[1,2,3] To better understand the curing behavior of commercially-available silicone elastomers, I used a thermorheological approach to better understand the curing behavior of silicone elastomers, which is important to broaden the design space using these thermal-cure elastomers, for a wide variety of applications, including soft robotics fabrication.[12]

In the spirit of developing innovative materials to advance the field of soft robotics, I challenged the conventional methods of using biotic materials—inanimate materials derived from living organisms, like wood or leather—that often require substantial post-processing, by repurposing the inanimate body of a spider as a ready-to-use actuator, initiating a new field we call “necrobotics”.[4,10] My other research focuses are interfacial phenomena[7,11] and wearable soft devices.[5,6,8,9]

 

C.V.| Google Scholar | Email: ty25@rice.edu