Xiao Shang, PhD, P.Eng.

Biography

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Prof. A. John Hart in the Mechanosynthesis Group (Department of Mechanical Engineering) and Prof. Zachary Cordero in the Gas Turbine Laboratory (Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics), supported by an NSERC Canada Postdoctoral Research Award. At MIT I am characterizing the manufacture of functionally graded gas-turbine blisks and planning their toolpaths under the DARPA METALS program, and developing a hybrid laser powder bed fusion + inkjet process for functionally graded materials. My research aims to remove the manufacturing bottleneck in AI-driven design, so that the materials and parts AI designs can be built accurately, quickly and affordably.

I received my PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Toronto in 2026 under Prof. Yu Zou, as an NSERC CGS D scholar. My thesis built a custom multi-material directed energy deposition platform, developed machine-learning methods for inverse process optimization and closed-loop control, and designed heterostructured and multifunctional metals. I was a visiting scholar with Prof. Peter D. Lee at University College London, where I studied magnetic-field-assisted DED with in-situ synchrotron X-ray imaging.

Before my PhD I was a mechanical engineer at the Brunner Neutrino Lab at McGill University, supporting nuclear physics experiments, and earned an MSc in Mechanical Engineering at McGill with Prof. Damiano Pasini on durable bistable auxetic metamaterials (US Patent 10,767,032). I hold a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from South China University of Technology.

  Download CV Google Scholar