Tak Sing Wong

Dr. Tak-Sing Wong is currently Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering and was the inaugural holder of Wormley Family Early Career Professorship in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University.  Dr. Wong conducted his postdoctoral research at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University  from 2010 – 2012 (with Prof. Joanna Aizenberg).  He received his Ph.D. degree in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA in 2009 (with Prof. Chih-Ming Ho), following his B.Eng. degree in Automation and Computer-Aided Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Wong’s research focuses on micro/nanoengineering, interfacial phenomena, and biologically inspired engineering with applications in materials science, water, health, and energy. Dr. Wong is a key inventor and pioneers a new class of pitcher-plant-inspired liquid-infused slippery surfaces including slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) and liquid-entrenched smooth surface (LESS). His research has collectively led to >40 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in Nature (2), Nature Materials (1), Nature Sustainability (1), Nature Communications (2), Science Advances (4), and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS) (2). Six of these papers are listed as top 1% highly cited papers in the fields of Chemistry, Materials Science, and Multidisciplinary Sciences according to Web of Science by Clarivate Analytics. Dr. Wong’s original paper on SLIPS published in Nature is the most cited paper out of 59,747 published papers in the field of wetting, antifouling, and superhydrophobic surfaces from 2010 – 2019 according to the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science. Dr. Wong is ranked among the top 2% most-cited researchers in the world by Elsevier based on his citation impact (PLoS Biology 18: e3000918, 2020). Dr. Wong currently holds a total of 62 issued and pending US and international patents including 22 issued U.S. and 20 foreign patents, as well as 20 pending U.S. and foreign patents. Dr. Wong is currently a co-founder, CTO, and broad member of spotLESS Materials Inc.

Dr. Wong has received a number of international and national awards and recognitions including: the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review (2014), ASME Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award (2018), IEEE Early Career Award in Nanotechnology (2016), National Academy of Engineering U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Invitee (2014), NSF CAREER Award (2014), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2014), Distinguished Alumni Award by Faculty of Engineering, CUHK (2017), 20 Outstanding Alumni by Mechanical Engineering, CUHK (2014); R&D 100 Award for the invention  of SLIPS: Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (2012), the Croucher Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2010 – 2012), the  Intel Foundation Ph.D. Fellowship (2007 – 2009), the Lucent Global Science Scholar (2001), and a number of best paper awards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).  Dr. Wong’s bio-inspired materials research has been featured in two documentaries by BBC (2012) and PBS NOVA (2013) and a short film by Science Nation (2016) of the National Science Foundation, as well as >100 international media, including  BBC, CBC, Reuters, The Economist, The Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, National Geographic, Scientific American, Popular Science, Discover, MIT Technology Review, Nature, and Science.

Dr. Wong is a National Geographic Explorer, and a member of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Materials Research Society (MRS), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and IEEE.  Dr. Wong currently serves on the Advisory/Editorial Boards of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) and Droplet (Wiley), and has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology (2015 – 2020) and a Guest Co-Editor for MRS Bulletin (2013). In addition, Dr. Wong serves as a peer reviewer in leading research journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Sustainability, Nature Communications, Science Advances, PNAS, Physical Review Letters, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, ACS Nano, Advanced Materials, Chemical Society Reviews, Nano Letters, and Lab on a Chip, etc.

This faculty member is associated with the Penn State Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) where a multitude of perspectives and cross-disciplinary collaboration within research is highly valued. Graduate students in the IGDP in MatSE may work with faculty members from across Penn State.