• Home
• Media
• News
• 2026
• Harvey Shi recognized with Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research

Harvey Shi recognized with Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research

Western Engineering professor HaoTian “Harvey” Shi has been awarded the 2025 Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, recognizing his outstanding contributions to advanced manufacturing, functional materials and AI-driven device design.

An Assistant Professor in the department of mechanical and materials engineering, Shi leads the Data to Manufacturing (D2M) Laboratory, where his group develops next-generation materials and manufacturing approaches for flexible sensors, energy storage systems, wearable electronics, and healthcare devices.

“It is truly an honour and a privilege to receive this award at this stage of my career," says Shi. "I see it as a reflection of the passion, dedication, creativity, and hard work of my students and team, who are at the heart of everything we do.”

“I am deeply grateful to my collaborators, mentors, and colleagues in the faculty and beyond for their continued support and encouragement. I am excited to continue building our research program that contributes to a better society." 

Shi’s research brings together artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, materials science and bioelectronic systems to accelerate the development of scalable, high-performance technologies. His work focuses on building nano- and micro-structured materials for flexible energy storage, electronic textiles and skin-mounted sensors with potential applications in wearable electronics, soft robotics and health monitoring.

As an early-career researcher, Shi has built a rapidly growing international profile. Since joining Western Engineering, he has published in leading journals including Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces and Chemical Engineering Journal. His scholarly impact includes an h-index of 16, more than 1,000 citations and more than 16 journal publications since 2022.

“Dr. Shi is innovative, inventive and highly regarded as an expert in his research area,” said Anthony Straatman, professor in mechanical and materials engineering, who nominated Shi for the award. “I cannot think of a more deserving recipient for the Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research.”

Shi has also secured significant research funding from provincial, federal, and industry sources, including an NSERC Discovery Grant, the NRC Ideation Fund, NSERC Alliance Advantage, MITACS Accelerate, the Entente Canada Grant, the Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund, and the Ontario Research Fund for research infrastructure.

His CFI-funded work will establish a fabrication and characterization platform to enable AI-driven design of personalized electronic skin for multimodality sensing in healthcare and soft robotics. His broader research program also advances sensor-integrated microfluidics systems, wearable zinc-ion batteries and supercapacitors, as well as sustainable electronic textiles.

Beyond his own lab, Shi is helping strengthen Western Engineering’s research and training capacity. He supervises a growing interdisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate researchers and has played a key role in renewing advanced and intelligent manufacturing initiatives within the Faculty, including planning for advanced manufacturing laboratory spaces in Western Engineering’s new building.

His contributions also extend to the broader research community. Shi serves on the Early Career Editorial Board of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces and as associate editor for Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering.

With a research program that bridges AI, manufacturing, materials, and biointerfaces, Shi is helping to advance technologies that are not only high-performing but also scalable, sustainable and ready for real-world impact.