Prof. Jun Chen was with the ACS Nano Editor-in-Chief Prof. Xiaodong Chen(Right) and the ACS Publications President Dr. James Milne(Left)
Jun Chen, an associate professor of bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received the prestigious ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society for his groundbreaking work on discovery of magnetoelastic effect in soft matter for healthcare and energy.
Created in 2012, the 2025 ACS Nano Lectureship honors two outstanding early career investigators whose work has significantly impacted the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Chen is the first scientist from UCLA to earn the award.
Chen earned the honor for his work leading the discovery of the giant magnetoelastic effect in soft materials. The effect, which had previously only been observed in rigid metals and metal alloys, has numerous potential applications in soft bioelectronics. The moisture of the human body traditionally requires sensors to have extra encapsulation layers, impeding their function, a limitation which intrinsically waterproof magnetoelastic materials can overcome. The lectureship webpage includes a short Q&A with Chen, covering his recent work and future research goals.This groundbreaking scientific contribution also brought him the 2025 Outstanding Early-Career Investigator Award by the Materials Research Society.
Chen’s lab at UCLA, the Bioelectronics Research Group, is pioneering the research efforts of using soft magnetoelastic materials for personalized healthcare and sustainable energy. Since joining UCLA Samueli in 2019, Chen has earned awards from the Office of Naval Research, the American Heart Association and the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering. He has also received UCLA Samueli’s V. M. Watanabe Excellence in Research Award, the UC Systemwide Shu Chien Early Career Award, the Inaugural AAASE Rising Star Award and the Hisako Terasaki Young Innovator Award. For six consecutive years, Chen has been recognized as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers by Clarivate, an international data and analytics firm.
At UCLA, Chen is also a faculty member with the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the California NanoSystems Institute.
Dr. Jun Chen is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research centers on soft matter innovations for applications in healthcare and energy. With an h-index of 126, Dr. Chen has authored two books and published over 380 peer-reviewed journal articles, including 280 as corresponding author. He recently led his team at UCLA in the groundbreaking discovery of the giant magnetoelastic effect in soft materials—a phenomenon traditionally limited to rigid metals and alloys since its first observation in 1865. This pioneering work has opened a new paradigm for developing intrinsically waterproof and biocompatible soft bioelectronics, establishing his group at the forefront of this emerging field.
In addition to his research, Dr. Chen serves as the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Med-X and holds associate editor roles for Biosensors and Bioelectronics, MRS Communications, Soft Science, VIEW Medicine, FlexMat, cMat, and Textiles. He also serves as the advisory and editorial boards of more than 20 journals, including Matter, Materials Today, Materials Today Energy, Cell Reports Physical Science, The Innovation, Nano Trends, and Biomedical Technology, among others.
What inspired you to pursue your area of research?
In the realm of flexible bioelectronics—whether skin-interfaced wearable devices or implantable systems—operation often occurs in high-humidity environments due to exposure to sweat and internal body fluids. However, most current bioelectronic devices are not intrinsically waterproof. Enhancing their water resistance typically requires additional encapsulation layers, which often increase device thickness and degrade performance, such as reducing sensitivity. When I began my independent research at UCLA, I asked myself a fundamental question: Is it possible to develop intrinsically waterproof bioelectronic devices? To explore this, I considered various natural energy modalities—electricity, magnetism, heat, and light. Among these, magnetic fields are particularly promising because they can penetrate water without degradation by humidity. This led me to investigate the magnetoelastic effect in soft materials and its application as soft and intrinsically waterproof magnetoelastic bioelectronics.
Historically, magnetoelasticity has been observed only in rigid metals and alloys since its discovery in 1865, requiring mechanical pressures as high as 10 MPa—conditions incompatible with soft, flexible electronics. I hypothesized that it might be possible to extend the magnetoelastic effect to soft polymer systems. In 2021, our research group at UCLA successfully discovered a giant magnetoelastic effect in soft polymer composites. By incorporating magnetic nanoparticles into elastomeric matrices, we observed significant changes in magnetic flux density under mechanical pressure. This groundbreaking study demonstrated that magnetoelasticity could be realized in soft materials, with pressure thresholds reduced to around 10 kPa—readily achievable through natural biomechanical activities such as heartbeat, respiration, and ocular motion. Our team is now at the forefront of advancing this novel field of soft magnetoelastic bioelectronics, striving to apply it across a wide range of biomedical and healthcare technologies.
What advances has your lab made in the past five years?
The most pioneering contribution from my lab over the past five years has been the discovery of the giant magnetoelastic effect in soft materials, enabling new directions in bioelectronic applications. The magnetoelastic effect, also named as Villari effect and discovered by Italian physicist Emilio Villari in 1865, is the variation of the magnetic field of a material under mechanical stress. This effect has been traditionally observed in rigid metals and metal alloys with an externally applied magnetic field and has been overlooked in the field of soft bioelectronics for three reasons. First, the magnetization variation in the biomechanical stress range is limited. Second, the requirement of the external magnetic field induces structural complexity and bulkiness. Finally, there exists a six orders of magnitude difference in mechanical modulus between magnetoelastic metals/metal alloys and human tissue. After joining UCLA, I led my research group in the discovery of the giant magnetoelastic effect in a soft polymer system (Nature Materials 2021; Front Cover; Research Highlighted by Nature; Research Highlighted by Nature Materials), later in a liquid permanent fluidic magnet (Nature Materials 2024; Nature Electronics 2024; Research Highlighted by Nature, Nature Materials, and Nature Reviews Bioengineering).The giant magnetoelastic effect was further coupled with magnetic induction to invent a soft magnetoelastic generator (MEG) as a fundamentally new platform technology for building up human-body-powered soft bioelectronics. The soft magnetoelastic bioelectronics are intrinsically waterproof since the magnetic fields can penetrate water with negligible intensity loss. Thus, they demonstrated stable performance in wearable and implantable manners without any encapsulation. This breakthrough has opened alternative avenues for practical human-body-centered energy, sensing, and therapeutic applications.
With the continued effort of my UCLA group, the discovery of giant magnetoelastic effect in soft systems has been extensively introduced to various research areas as a fundamentally new working mechanism, including injectable and retrievable liquid bioelectronics, liquid acoustic sensing, pulse wave monitoring, speaking without vocal fold, haptic sensing, implantable cardiovascular monitoring, respiration monitoring, muscle physiotherapy, human-machine interface, personal thermoregulation, even wind, water wave, and biomechanical energy harvesting. Our group at UCLA is pioneering this research effort in discovering giant magnetoelastic effects in soft systems for bioelectronics and their applications for healthcare and energy.
What’s next for your research?
The giant magnetoelastic effect in soft systems represents a transformative scientific discovery, yet its full theoretical and experimental potential remains to be unlocked. Our group is deeply committed to pioneering a comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon and leveraging it as a foundational platform for a new class of intelligent, responsive technologies. By exploring its integration across a broad spectrum of applications—from bioelectronics to soft robotics—we strive to catalyze breakthroughs that redefine the interface between materials and life, ultimately driving profound societal advancement and future productivity.
What advice would you give to students who aspire to be where you are now?=
Set ambitious goals, think beyond boundaries, work with unwavering dedication, and exhibit enduring resilience.