Ming Dao

Biography

Ming Dao is the director and principal investigator of MIT’s Nanomechanics Laboratory and senior research scientist in DMSE. He teaches 3.35 (Fracture and Fatigue) and 3.22 (Structure and Mechanics of Materials), which explore the relationship between microstructure and mechanical properties.
 
Dao’s research interests include cell mechanics in human diseases, nanomechanics of advanced materials, and AI and machine learning in engineering and biomedicine. He has published more than 170 papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature Materials, Science Advances, Nature Communications, PNAS, ACS Nano, Biomaterials, and Small. His work has earned him recognition as a ScholarGPS Highly Ranked Scholar – Lifetime (inaugural cohort, since 2022), a Scilit Top Cited Scholar (since 2024), and a Stanford-Elsevier Top 2% Scientist (single year since 2019; career since 2020).
 
Dao was named the 2012 Singapore Research Chair/Professor of Bioengineering and Infectious Disease by MIT and elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2016. He has also served as a visiting or adjunct professor at the National Institute of Blood Transfusion, France (2016-2017), Xi’an Jiaotong University, China (2011-2020), and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2018-2024). He has also chaired or co-chaired 20 international symposiums and workshops as an organizer.