Prof.  Hejun Duobtained his BEng and MEng from Nanjing University of  Aeronautics and Astronautics, China in 1983 and 1986, respectively.  Subsequently, he lectured there until 1988 before he left for Imperial  College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK for his PhD study. He  obtained his PhD from Imperial College in 1991 and joined Nanyang  Technological University (NTU), Singapore immediately after that. He is  currently an associate professor in the School of Mechanical and  Aerospace Engineering, NTU and the Director, Centre for Mechanics of  Micro-Systems. He served as Head of Engineering Mechanics Division in  the school from 2008 to 2011. His research interests are mainly involved  in three areas: 1) MEMS, thin films and microfluidics; 2) smart  materials and their applications; and 3) numerical and computational  methods for engineering applications. He has obtained over 15 research  grants from various research funding agencies in the past, totaling more  than S$10 million as PI or Co-PI. He has published over 150  international refereed journal papers, which are well cited over 2200  times in the SCI with a H-Index of 25.