News

2025

• May 2025: Prof. Ma gave in invited talk at the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories, Purdue University.
• May 2025: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk at the Mechanics and Materials Engineering Seminar, University of California, San Diego.
• April 2025: Jinuan gave an talk at the 2025 International Symposium on Ultrasonic Imaging and Tissue Characterization (UITC 2025), Silver Spring, MD.
• April 2025: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk at the Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California, Irvine.
• April 2025: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan.
• March 2025: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Binghamton University.
• February 2025: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk at Weill Cornell.
• January 2025: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk at the UW-Madison BME Seminar.
• January 2025: Jinuan’s paper entitled “Blind-label subwavelength ultrasound imaging” is published in Science Advances.

2024

• December 2024: Dajun and collaborator’s paper entitled “Revealing stacking order transition via nanomechanical resonator” is published in npj 2D Materials and Applications.
• December 2024: Carissa’s paper entitled “TEM Cell With a High-Transparency Aperture for Homogeneous Microwave Absorption and Real-Time Viewing of Thermoelastic Expansion of Tissue” is published in IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology.
• September 2024: Carissa won the 2nd place in the Panther Workshop Poster Competition. Congratulations!
• September 2024: Prof. Ma and collaborator’s paper entitled “Ultra-broadband illusion acoustics for space and time camouflages” is published in Nature Communications.
• May 2024: Prof. Ma gave an invited talk on “Parametric study of blind-label acoustic subwavelength imaging” at the 186th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Ottawa, Canada.
• April 2024: Jinuan and collaborator’s paper entitled “Single Layer Silk and Cotton Woven Fabrics for Acoustic Emission and Active Sound Suppression” is published in Advanced Materials.
• March 2024: Dajun’s paper entitled ” Metamaterial-based passive analog processor for wireless vibration sensing” is published in Communications Engineering.

2023

• December 2023: Our group got a FY24 DURIP award for “A High‐Framerate Optical Imaging System for Brain Tissue Dynamics Inspection Under Transient Energy Exposure” https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3615077/dod-awards-161-million-to-universities-to-purchase-equipment-supporting-defense/.
• September 2023: Welcome Abena Otchere-Boateng to join our group!
• August 2023: Our group got grant support from NSF to apply acoustic fields to a Future Manufacturing system https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2328096.
• August 2023: Our group got grant support from ONR Panther Program to study thermoelastic dynamics of tissues under pulsed microwave heating.
• August 2023: Audrey’s paper entitled “Accurate prediction of measured microwave-induced thermoacoustic signals via multiphysics simulations augmented with an acoustic detection system transfer function” was published in IEEE Journal on Multiscale and Multiphysics Computational Techniques.
• August 2023: Prof. Chu Ma was invited to visit the 3M Center at St. Paul, MN, and gave a seminar about acoustic metamaterials.
• June 2023: Prof. Chu Ma won the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (3M NTFA). 
• May 2023: Audrey and Lexie’s paper entitled “The Evolution of Microwave-Induced Thermoacoustic Signals Generated During Pulsed Microwave Ablation in Bovine Liver” was published in IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology.
• May 2023:  Prof. Chu Ma chaired a special session named “Interaction of EM waves with acoustic waves” at the 184^th Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Chicago and gave an invited talk.  Prof. Chu Ma also won the Women in Acoustics Young Investigator Travel Award.
• May 2023:  Audrey gave an talk about “Thermoacoustic signals generated from pulsed microwave ablation in liver tissue” at the 184^th Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Chicago.
• May 2023: Jinuan gave a talk about “Ultrasonic Subwavelength Imaging with Blind Structured Illumination” and presented a poster at the 184^th Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Chicago.
• March 2023: Our group received the Draper Technology Innovation Fund (TIF) from Discovery to Product (D2P) and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) to advance the licensability of our patent about metamaterial wall panels.
• February 2023: Michael gave a presentation about underwater acoustic topological materials at the annual Breakthrough Research and Education Workshops (BREWs) organized by UW Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).
• January 2023: Professor Ma received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2237619.

2022

• September 2022: Professor Ma served as the speaker for the UW-Madison Women in Science & Engineering (WISE) Seminar.
• August 2022: Dajun presented his work about vibration sensing and won the student travel award at the 2022 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE 2022), St. Louis.
• July 2022: Professor Ma served as the instructor for the Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE) summer program.
• June 2022: Professor Ma attended the Big Ten Women’s Workshop in Chicago.
• May 2022: Audrey presented her work about “The evolution of microwave-induced thermoacoustic signal characteristics generated during pulsed microwave ablation” at the Acoustical Society of America 182th Meeting, Denver.
• May 2022: Jinuan’s paper about “Far-Field Acoustic Subwavelength Imaging with Blind Structured Illumination and Joint-Sparsity Reconstruction” was published in Physical Review Applied.
• April 2022: Professor Ma gave an invited talk about “Combine Functional Materials and Signal Processing for Acoustic Sensing” at the Department of Physics and Astronomy Colloquium, University of Mississippi.
• April 2022: ASFM group participated in Engineering Expo! We created interactive exhibitions to demonstrate acoustic sensing, metamaterials, vibration, and cloaking.
• April 2022: Michael’s paper about “Underwater ultrasonic topological waveguides by metal additive manufacturing” was published in Applied Physics Letters.
• April 2022: Professor Ma gave an invited talk about “Metamaterials for Acoustic Sensing” at the 2022 Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium (AMIC) Annual Meeting.
• March 2022: Xiaohong Zhang, Siddharth Subramani, and Yuhui Xu joined ASFM group as M.S. students.
• March 2022: Audrey’s paper about “Microwave-induced thermoacoustic signal characteristics in a dynamic temperature environment” was published in Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express.
• March 2022: Jinuan and collaborator’s paper about “Single fibre enables acoustic fabrics via nanometre-scale vibrations” was published in Nature. Read more here: https://news.mit.edu/2022/fabric-acoustic-microphone-0316.
• February 2022: ASFM group’s undergraduate research was featured in UW Madison College of Engineering News. Read more here: https://engineering.wisc.edu/news/chu-ma-has-built-a-lab-where-undergraduate-researchers-can-thrive-2/.

2021

• December 2021: Professor Ma was selected as the finalist for 2021 WARF Innovation Award. Read more about our work here: https://www.warf.org/videos/indoor-sound-shaping-based-on-broadband-metamaterial-reflector-2021-warf-innovation-awards-nominee/.
• December 2021: Audrey presented her work about “Impact of Microwave Pulse Characteristics on Thermoacoustic Signals Generated during Pulsed Microwave Ablation” at the 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (APS/URSI).
• December 2021: Jinuan presented her work about “Far-field acoustic subwavelength imaging with structured illumination and joint-sparsity reconstruction” at the Acoustical Society of America 181th Meeting, Seattle.
• August 2021: Professor Ma and collaborator’s paper about “Three-dimensional soundproof acoustic metacage” was published in Physical Review Letters.
• August 2021: Dajun Zhang joined ASFM group as a PhD student.
• March 2021: Professor Ma and collaborator’s paper about “Characterization of an underwater metamaterial made of aluminum honeycomb panels at low frequencies” was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

2020

• December 2020: Audrey presented her work about “Microwave-induced thermacoustic signal characteristics during pulsed microwave ablation” at the Acoustics Virtually Everywhere, Acoustical Society of America 179th Meeting.
• December 2020: Jinuan presented her work about “Far-field acoustic subwavelength imaging with structured illumination” at the Acoustics Virtually Everywhere, Acoustical Society of America 179th Meeting.
• December 2020: Our group won the grant from Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Fall Research Competition.
• December 2020: Undergraduate researchers in ASFM group, Zifu Qin and Xiaohan Liu, published a paper about “Acoustic Wave Reflection Control Based on Broadband Differential Phase Shifters” in Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering.
• December 2020: Professor Ma’s paper about Acoustic Angle-Selective Transmission Based on Binary Phase Gratings was published in Physical Review Applied.
• November 2020: Professor Ma served as the panelist for the Women in Academia & Industry Dinner Event, UW-Madison Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
• November 2020: Professor Ma served as a faculty guest in the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Learning Community seminar.
• July 2020: Audrey Evans, co-advised by Professor Ma and Professor Susan Hagness, presented her work about “Characteristics of thermoacoustic signals induced during pulsed microwave ablation” in a special session of  2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC) (invited).
• June 2020: ASFM group became part of a Superseed project exploring topological materials across different length scales supported by UW Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). Read more about MRSEC Superseed Projects here: https://mrsec.wisc.edu/superseeds-seeds/.
• May 2020: Professor Ma and collaborator’s paper on “Wide-angle broadband nonreflecting acoustic metamaterial fence” was published in Physical Review Applied.
• March 2020: Professor Ma gave an invited talk about “Acoustic Functional Materials for Imaging” at the UW Medical Physics Seminar.

2019

• December 2019: Michael Wang joined ASFM group as an M.S. student.
• December 2019: Jinuan Lin joined ASFM group as a PhD student.
• August 2019: Professor Ma started the Acoustic Sensing and Functional Materials (ASFM) Laboratory at UW-Madison. https://www.engr.wisc.edu/focus-new-faculty-chu-ma-ear-interdisciplinary-acoustics-research/.