I am a Research Associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland at College Park. Currently I am working as a full time Graduate Research Assistant in Robotics, Automation, Manipulation and Sensing (RAMS) Laboratory, supervised by Professor Jaydev P. Desai.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Jan. 2007
- M.S., Precision Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, 1997
- B.S., Precision Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, 1994
RESEARCH
- Current
- Modeling soft-tissue probing, cutting, dissection, and electrocautery tasks using FEM. Computational / analytical models will be based on experimental data from ex vivo studies on animal tissues and/or organs and also from in vivo studies for the above tasks. The developed models will then be displayed on a haptic feedback display
- Previous
- Modeling and simulation of two types of electro-active polymers, dielectric elastomers and ferroelectric polymers, using FEM
- Developed a global approach of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique to measure full-field strain distributions
- Micro-mechanical modeling of void nucleation using Monte Carlo method
- Digital Moiré
PUBLICATIONS
- Gao Z, Lister K, and Desai JP, “Constitutive modeling of liver tissue: experiment and theory”. Second biennial IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics-BioRob, October 2008.
- Gao Z and Cuitino AM , “Modeling
and simulation of the coupled mechanical-electrical response of dielectric
elastomers”. (to be submitted).
- Cao Y, Bly R, Moore W, Gao Z,
Cuitino AM, and Soboyejo WO, “On the measurement of human osteosarcoma cell
elastic modulus using shear assay experiments”. J Mater Sci-Mater M
2007;18(1):103-9.
- Zhou J, Gao Z, Cuitino AM, and
Soboyejo WO, “Fatigue of as-fabricated open cell aluminum foam”. J Eng Mater Technol Trans ASME 2005;127(1):
40-5.5.
- Zhou J, Gao Z, Cuitiño AM, and
Soboyejo WO, “Effects of heat treatment on the compressive deformation behavior
of open cell aluminum foams”. Mater Sci Eng A
2004;386:118-28.
- Gao Z, Zhou S, and Hu Y, “High-speed fringe analysis by using stair-shaped virtual grating demodulation”. Opt Laser Eng 1997;28(6):411-22.