WSEPEE-2025

Dr. Cheng is the McWane Professor of Materials Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and also a University’s Alumni Professor at Auburn University. He is also in charge of Auburn University Detection and Food Safety Center (AUDFS). Dr. Cheng’s research interests are the smart/functional materialsand their applications in energy storage and smart structures such as sensors and actuators.His research activities involve ceramics, polymers, metals/alloys, biomaterials, and composites, including preparation and characterization of these materials. He is a pioneer in the development of polymer-based dielectric composites and electroactive polymers (i.e., artificial muscles). His research has been focused on the electric/electronic, magnetic, thermal, optical, and mechanical properties and the coupling effects among them. In recent years, he spent more time on the development of both functional materials from renewable biomass and sensors for food safety and precision agriculture. One of these technologies was selected by US FDA in 2015 as one of five technologies for future food safety.He has authored more than 200 articles and holds 10 US patents and one EU patent. He was invited to be tutorial/workshop lecture at various international conferences, such as MRS Fall Meeting, IEEE RFID, and IEEE FerroSchool. He is the founding chair of Technical Committee on Functional Dielectrics under IEEE-DEIS, anAdCommember of IEEE Sensor Council, a member of USDA Multistate Committee on sensors and automation for specialty crop. He also serves as an Associate editor of IEEE Transaction on AgriFood Electronics and on editorial board of journals, such as Scientific Report, Journal of Advanced Dielectrics, and IDE NanoDielectrics. In last 20+ years, Dr. Cheng organized/chaired 9 international conferences/symposiums in the related areas, and will chair the IEEE CEIDP (Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenomena) in 2024. He was selected as the receiptor of the Junior(2007) and Senior (2020) Faculty Research Award from Auburn Engineering Council, one of receiptor of the Faculty Awards from 3M (2007) and the International Union of Crystallography Young Scientist Awards (1996). He was also selected as one of the Outstanding Young Scholar Award from CNSF (2006).