Bio
From January 2025, Yinyin Bao has served as an Associate Professor of Polymer Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, the University of Helsinki. He received his PhD degree in Polymer Chemistry (2012) from the University of Science and Technology of China. From 2012 to 2014, he completed his postdoctoral research at KU Leuven and then became a Marie Curie IntraEurapean Fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research at the University of Paris Sud. He joined ETH Zürich in 2016 and was promoted to a senior scientist position as a Group Leader at the end of 2018. His research interests pertain to the application of polymer chemistry in biomedicine and optoelectronics, such as light-emitting materials, drug delivery, 3D-printed medical devices, etc. He is an Evaluation Committee Member of the Cancer ITMO (Multi-Organisation Thematic Institute) of the French Alliance for Life Sciences and Health (AVIESAN, 2021, 2022, 2024) and has served as a Next-Generation Board Member of the journal Aggregate (Wiley) since 2025 and Youth Editorial Board Member of the journal Responsive Materials (Wiley) since 2024.

Talk
Non-Equilibrium: What Ciliary Motors, Sausages, and Light-Driven Polymers Have in Common

Bio
Hao Zeng is an Associate Professor of Soft Matter Robotics at Tampere University and a Finland Academy Research Fellow. He leads the Light Robots research group, which explores the intersection of physics, soft mechanics, and materials engineering. Dr. Zeng earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Photonics from Nankai University, followed by a Ph.D. in Photonics from the University of Florence in 2015. His research focuses on materials robotics—systems that are out of equilibrium, interactive, and capable of communication. He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council in 2022.

Talk
Intelligent Microrobots Made from Colloidal Assemblies

Bio
Dr. Minghan Hu is a Group Leader at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich. Minghan was born in Nanning, China, and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Materials Science from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. Following his studies, Minghan pursued his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, where he graduated in January 2019. His doctoral research was conducted under the joint supervision of Prof. Katharina Landfester, Prof. Héloïse Thérien-Aubin, and Dr. Markus Bannwarth. After a brief postdoctoral position in Mainz, Minghan continued his research journey at ETH Zurich as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Laboratory for Soft Materials and Interfaces, led by Prof. Lucio Isa. In 2024, Minghan established his group with the support of an SNSF Ambizione grant, focusing on advancing soft materials towards developing intelligent micromachines, with a particular emphasis on biomedical applications.