Dr. Wentao Yan has been an assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS) since 2018. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and also a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in the USA. He finished his phd work jointly between Tsinghua University and Northwestern University, after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in Tsinghua University. His research is focused on employing computational modeling to understand the mechanics and physics in advanced manufacturing and to improve the manufacturing quality in a “smart” way instead of trial-and-error experimentation.