Ming Dao
- Principal Investigator & Director, Nanomechanics Lab
- Principal Research Scientist, DMSE
- Ph.D. Materials Science, 1994, University of California - San Diego
- M.S. Materials Science, 1991, University of California - San Diego
- B.Eng. Engineering Mechanics, 1989, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
- Room 4-045
- mingdao@mit.edu
Biomaterials; Computational Materials Science; Fracture, Fatigue, and Failure of Materials; Mechanical Behavior of Materials; Metallurgy; Nanotechnology; Surfaces, Interfaces, and Thin Films

Recent News
“Spleen-on-a-chip” yields insight into sickle cell disease
January 31, 2023
Deep learning for mechanical property evaluation
March 18, 2020
Using artificial intelligence to engineer materials’ properties
February 13, 2019
Ming Dao Research on Sickle Cells
September 7, 2018
How to bend and stretch a diamond
April 20, 2018
Discovery could help treatments for sickle cell disease
August 16, 2016
How the spleen filters blood
June 28, 2016
Publications
2021
K. Zolotovsky et al., “Fish-inspired flexible protective material systems with anisotropic bending stiffness”, Communications Materials, vol. 2, no. 1. Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021.
E. Tsymbalov, Shi, Z., Dao, M., Suresh, S., Li, J., and Shapeev, A., “Machine learning for deep elastic strain engineering of semiconductor electronic band structure and effective mass”, npj Computational Materials, vol. 7, no. 1. Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021.
2020
G. E. Karniadakis and Dao, M., “Multiscale Modeling of Diseases: Overview”, in Handbook of Materials Modeling, Springer International Publishing, 2020, pp. 2541-2550.
2015
Z. -J. Wang et al., “Cyclic deformation leads to defect healing and strengthening of small-volume metal crystals”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 112. pp. 13502-13507, 2015.
2012
Y. Zhang, Yao, H., Ortiz, C., Xu, J., and Dao, M., “Bio-inspired interfacial strengthening strategy through geometrically interlocking designs”, Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, vol. 15. pp. 70-77, 2012.
2010
H. Yao et al., “Protection mechanisms of the iron-plated armor of a deep-sea hydrothermal vent gastropod”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 107. pp. 987-992, 2010.
2008
I. S. Choi, Detor, A. J., Schwaiger, R., Dao, M., Schuh, C. A., and Suresh, S., “Mechanics of indentation of plastically graded materials - II: Experiments on nanocrystalline alloys with grain size gradients”, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, vol. 56. pp. 172-183, 2008.
2007
K. Tai, Dao, M., Suresh, S., Palazoglu, A., and Ortiz, C., “Nanoscale heterogeneity promotes energy dissipation in bone”, Nature Materials, vol. 6. pp. 454-462, 2007.
2001
M. Dao, Chollacoop, N., Van Vliet, K. J., Venkatesh, T. A., and Suresh, S., “Computational modeling of the forward and reverse problems in instrumented sharp indentation”, Acta Materialia, vol. 49. pp. 3899-3918, 2001.