Prof Gih-Keong Lau obtained his BEng (1st Class Honors) and MEng from the Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore and was a project officer and research associate with the same department from 2001 to 2003. He then proceeded to obtain his PhD degree from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands in 2007. His current research interests include sensors and actuators, dielectric elastomer actuators, soft and aerial robotics, tunable optics and acoustics. His earlier worked on the research of micro-electro mechanical system and topology optimization of compliant mechanism.  

He has resolved several technological challenges encountered in the development of artificial muscles and bioinspired drones. His research outcomes include 10 Nature-indexed journal papers (including one in Science Robotics in 2021), and were well-publicized and highlighted in journal features, press, and online news (including CNN, Newsweek, and IEEE Spectrum).   His recent work on tunable acoustic device has been featured as the back cover of Advanced Material Technologies in 2023, while his review on smart tunable windows was highlighted as features in the Applied Physics Review 2022. He has been a serial inventor who innovates actuator technology for industries in Singapore, Taiwan, and the Netherlands.  He was the principal investigator of several projects under government and industry funding during his career with universities. The funders include the Agency of Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), Singapore Millennium Foundation (an endowment of Temasek Foundation), Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology, and Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute. He is the principal investigator of the 2020 Young Scholar Research Grant administered by Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council.  

He had received several awards for serving the university and international professional society. He is a recipient of 2024 NYCU Engineering Excellent Teaching Award and 2021 Excellent Mentor Award.  He is a recipient of the 2019 Gwong-Yih Lee Junior Chair Professor award from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan.  He is a recipient of the 2019 Service Award from NTU, after receiving the 2017 MAE Service Award from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE). He received Tan Chin Tuan Fellowship in 2015 to support his outbound visit as a visiting professor to École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in June 2015.  He was an associate editor for the 2017-2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2017-2019). He is currently a member of editorial committee for the Chinese Society of Mechanism and Machine Theory (CSMMT), and the Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (CTAM). He was the co-chair organizing the International Conference on Advanced Mechanism and Machine Technology in 2021 at Hsinchu, Taiwan.

We are actively working on the fundamental and applied research on sensors and actuators, smart materials and structures, electroactive polymer actuators (artificial muscles), flapping drones, compliant mechanism, and their integration into bio-inspired robotics and tunable optical/acoustic systems.

Research vision
- To realize bio-inspired soft robotic and micro-mechatronic systems, tunable optic/acoustic devices using muscle-like
actuators/sensors

• To develop muscles-like actuators/sensory by exploiting the scale, forms, structure and mechanism of engineering materials, either
  passive or stimuli-responsive
  Approach by systematic design and analysis of extreme mechanics and multidisciplinary physics of metamaterials, and by microand-
  nano-engineering of multiple materials