Dr. Yao Fu is an Associate Professor at the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She received her Bachelor’s degree at Hefei University of Technology in 2006 and her Master’s degree at the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2009. She completed her PhD studies in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in 2013. Her research interests include environment-assisted fracture and fatigue behavior, computationally guided innovative materials and manufacturing design, and multi-scale simulation modeling of microstructural evolution in additive manufacturing processes.