Nicholas Fang

Nicholas Fang
Name	Nicholas Fang
Birth date	1970s
Birth place	Singapore
Fields	Nanotechnology; Microelectromechanical systems; Materials science; Acoustics; Photonics
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Harvard University; National University of Singapore
Alma mater	National University of Singapore; Stanford University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor	Federico Capasso; George M. Whitesides
Known for	Acoustic metamaterials; Microfabrication techniques; Ultrasound transducers
Awards	MacArthur Fellowship; National Science Foundation CAREER Award

Nicholas Fang is a Singapore-born engineer and inventor recognized for pioneering work in acoustic metamaterials, microelectromechanical systems, and scalable microfabrication. His research intersects materials science, acoustics, photonics, and biomedical engineering to produce devices used in sensing, imaging, and communication. Fang has held faculty positions at top institutions and collaborated with researchers from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and industrial partners in Silicon Valley and Boston.

Early life and education

Fang was born in Singapore and completed early schooling in the city-state before attending the National University of Singapore for undergraduate studies in engineering. He pursued graduate education at Stanford University and later at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with advisers connected to laboratories at Harvard University and Bell Labs-era networks. During doctoral work he specialized in microfabrication and device physics, developing techniques related to lithography used across laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Palo Alto, California.

Academic and research career

Fang began his academic career with a postdoctoral appointment that involved collaborations between groups at Harvard University and MIT. He established a laboratory that combined expertise from materials science groups at MIT with applied teams from Massachusetts General Hospital and technology spinouts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His group produced cross-disciplinary work linking researchers at Harvard Medical School, Wyss Institute, and industry partners including companies in Silicon Valley. Fang has served on advisory boards for centers at the National University of Singapore and research consortia funded by the National Science Foundation and multinational research foundations.

Major contributions and inventions

Fang is widely cited for demonstrating unusual acoustic phenomena using engineered structures, contributing to the emergence of acoustic metamaterials as a field allied with prior advances in photonic crystals and metamaterial research from groups associated with Bell Labs and Princeton University. He developed compact devices for controlling sound waves, including subwavelength focusing elements and negative-index acoustic components inspired by work at Caltech and Harvard on electromagnetic metamaterials. Fang’s lab invented fabrication routes that enabled high-throughput production of micro- and nanostructured surfaces, drawing on techniques from Stanford cleanrooms and transfer printing methods pioneered at MIT. These technologies have been applied to ultrasound transducers used in collaborations with Brigham and Women's Hospital and prototype systems evaluated by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and University of California, Berkeley.

His inventions include MEMS-based acoustic sensors and actuators that leverage material stacks similar to those developed in CMOS research labs and microfluidic interfaces borne out of collaborations with teams at Harvard Medical School and Wyss Institute. Fang contributed to methods for acoustic cloaking and waveguiding by adapting concepts from electromagnetic cloaking research at Duke University and Stanford University. Commercialization efforts led to startups and licensing agreements with companies incubated in Boston and Singapore technology parks, interfacing with corporate partners such as multinational firms originating from South Korea and Japan.

Awards and honors

Fang’s work has been recognized with major fellowships and national grants. He received a MacArthur Fellowship for innovation in material and device design and an early-career award from the National Science Foundation for his contributions to microfabrication and wave control. His publications have earned citations across engineering lists maintained by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Physical Society databases. In addition to academic honors, Fang has been invited to lecture at venues such as Royal Society forums and keynote symposia at Materials Research Society and Acoustical Society of America meetings.

Personal life and advocacy

Outside the laboratory, Fang has advocated for science and technology education in Singapore and the broader Asia-Pacific region, participating in outreach programs with organizations linked to the National University of Singapore and regional science festivals. He has supported entrepreneurship training through incubators modeled after MIT's technology transfer initiatives and has mentored students who later joined startups in Silicon Valley and Boston. Fang serves on advisory panels for diversity and inclusion efforts at academic institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has collaborated with non-profit organizations focused on STEM access in collaboration with partners from Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

Selected publications and patents

Representative publications from Fang’s group appeared in leading journals and conference proceedings associated with Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters, and applied venues connected to the IEEE. Selected patents cover acoustic metamaterials, MEMS transducers, and scalable microfabrication processes; these filings have been assigned to university technology transfer offices and licensed to startups emerging from research clusters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Singapore. His work is cited in reviews authored by researchers at Princeton University, Caltech, and Harvard University that trace the development of metamaterials and microfabrication over recent decades.

Category:Singaporean engineers Category:Materials scientists Category:Inventors