Two faculty join materials department in spring 2026

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering was thrilled to welcome two new faculty members in the spring 2026 semester. Assistant Professors Wenjie Zhou and Yuanwei Li bring to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign two distinct focuses in materials research, from the examination of entangled matter concepts to the development of photonic devices.  

Assistant Professor Wenjie Zhou  

Joining the faculty team in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering was a natural next step in an academic journey, Zhou said when describing his career progression. He traveled across the globe throughout his education, moving from China to Toronto while completing an undergraduate degree in chemistry. He then shifted to Northwestern University, where he earned a PhD focused on molecular and colloidal synthesis, and particularly the use of geometry-inspired principles to organize nanoscale matter. He then joined Caltech as a postdoctoral scholar in mechanical and civil engineering, expanding his focus to architected materials, topological materials, mechanics and computation.  

Changing direction from programming interactions among molecules and nanoparticles to learning how structure governs behavior at larger scales, Zhou arrived at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a unifying view — :architecture and connectivity can be treated as primary design variables, on equal footing with chemical composition.  This idea anchors the Intelligent Matter Lab, his new research group at Illinois.  

To illustrate the principle, Zhou reached for a simple analogy.
 
“A steel bar and a steel chain are made from the same material, but they behave completely differently,” Zhou said. “That difference does not come from chemistry. It comes from connectivity.” 

In the steel bar, the material is continuous and rigid. In the chain, the same material is divided into linked units that can move, rotate and rearrange. For Zhou, that distinction captures a broader principle: topology, or the way a material’s components are connected, can be just as important as composition in determining how a material behaves. 

Zhou calls this principle "entangled matter," and he believes it opens a largely uncharted design space in materials science. In addition to what a material is made of, his lab focuses on engineering how its parts are linked, constrained and allowed to move. Working across scales from the molecular to the macroscopic, the Intelligent Matter Lab combines synthesis, experiment and computation to understand — and ultimately predict — the properties that emerge when matter is interlocked rather than bonded.  

For Zhou, that vision extends far beyond the lab. 

The long-term goal is to create materials that are not passive objects, but adaptive systems. By programming geometry, topology and contact between many interacting units, Zhou hopes to develop materials that can change shape, absorb energy, respond to their environment and perform mechanical functions with minimal external control. 

Zhou said the appeal of entangled matter lies partly in its generality. The building blocks can exist at many scales and take simple forms, because the function comes from how they are connected rather than only from what they are made of.  

“If we understand the rules of interlocking, we can begin to design materials almost like machines,” Zhou said. “In principle, simple building blocks could assemble into structures that stiffen, soften, deploy or reconfigure depending on what is needed.” 

In his research, Zhou plans to leverage the community the Illinois campus offers, including the use of the Materials Research Lab, where his office is located. He spoke highly of the ways in which the U. of I. is best suited to help him explore his emergent field, given fast iteration is required between theory, synthesis and testing.  

“If I need help from a colleague, it could happen within a week,” Zhou said. “If I need to test a material, find an instrument or talk through a physics problem with a colleague, the resources are already here.”  

For Zhou, that combination of intellectual breadth and practical infrastructure makes Illinois an ideal place to build a research program around entangled matter — a field where chemistry, materials science, mechanics and computation all must talk to each other. Zhou believes Illinois provides the community and the tools to make that possible. 

Assistant Professor Yuanwei Li 

A path of layered curiosity led Li to choose the Department of Materials Science and Engineering for the start of her independent research career. She earned her doctorate at Northwestern University, where she studied nanoparticle assembly into colloidal crystals and photonic structures. She then continued her postdoctoral research at Stanford University as a Stanford Science Fellow, focused on biophotonics — specifically, using light as a tool for biosensing and biological data collection. 

Through each step of her academic training, a new dimension of the same core question emerged: how can the arrangement of matter at the smallest scales interact with and shape light? At Illinois, Li's lab integrates materials science, nanofabrication and optical physics to engineer nanoscale light-matter interactions, developing a versatile toolkit of nanophotonic materials through advances in data-driven design, precise synthesis and AI-driven spectroscopy. The goal is to create materials that don't just mimic nature's optical tricks but surpass them. 

"For your laptops or phones, imagine if they were processed by light instead of electricity," Li said. " It could be much faster and more energy-efficient, and so we are developing new ways to synthesize nanophotonic materials that can be useful for optical data processing." 

The Li lab is also developing semiconductor and plasmonic materials for photonic devices capable of reading biological data at a faster pace. By developing optical sensors for sensitive, high-throughput and real-time health monitoring, she envisions technologies that could save patients time and move diagnostics toward a more personalized and predictive model, allowing them to stay updated on their health at home rather than waiting weeks for results from a hospital visit. 

While building her lab team is the priority for spring 2026, Li plans to begin teaching in the fall. Potential areas include optical materials, biomaterials, biosensing, and colloids and surfaces. As she prepares to bring students into her research, she has already settled on a philosophy for guiding them. 

"Science is a team sport — you're not only the coach for your students, but also the cheerleader," she said. " We need to make sure students know how to develop their personal and professional skillsets, how they can thrive in this environment and how they can do so in a happy way." 

Illinois Grainger Engineering Affiliations 

Yuanwei Li is an Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Li is affiliated with the Department of Chemistry, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Materials Research Laboratory and the Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory.  

Wenjie Zhou is an Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Zhou is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Laboratory.