Dr. Fu received a B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2000 and an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2002. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2007, completing his thesis under the guidance of Dr. Jongyoon Han. From 2007 to 2009, Dr. Fu was an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Christopher S. Chen's group at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Fu has been at the University of Michigan in the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2009 to the present, achieving the rank of Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 2020. Additionally, Dr. Fu holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.
Dr. Fu’s research contributions have earned him recognition through more than 30 institutional, national, and international awards and honors. These include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2012), the Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society (2016), the Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award from the American Chemical Society (2020), and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2022). Dr. Fu is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineers (IAMBE), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Dr. Fu was a member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Guidelines Working Group from 2019 to 2021 and is currently a member of the ISSCR Publications Committee. He is a council member of the Biomedical Engineering Society Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group (BMES CMBE-SIG). Dr. Fu currently serves as the Associate Editor of npj Regenerative Medicine and is an Editorial or Advisory Board Member of Cell Stem Cell, Biophysical Journal, Cell Regeneration, Mechanobiology in Medicine, and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. Additionally, Dr. Fu is a Founding Member of the Catalysts Program of EMBO Journal.
Dr. Fu’s current research focuses on mechanobiology, stem cell bioengineering, developmental bioengineering, microfluidics and BioMEMS. Dr. Fu and his co-workers' research on modeling human development using human stem cells has contributed significantly to the emerging field of "Artificial Embryos", which was selected by MIT Technology Review as one of the “10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2018” and by Nature Methods as “the Method of 2023”.