The Materials Research Society (MRS) has announced that James Utama Surjadi, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), received the 2026 MRS Postdoctoral Award, one of the Society’s Spring 2026 awards.
Surjadi is being recognized for advancing mechanical properties of polymer and medium-entropy alloy metamaterials into a high-compliance regime via defect engineering and architecture design.
He will present his talk, Tough by Design—What Metamaterials Can Learn from Hydrogels, as part of the MRS Award Recipients—Lightning Talks and Panel Discussion during the 2026 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit in Boston, Massachusetts.
“I’m honored to receive this MRS Award for works that began with a rather simple question: what if we could design around the trade-offs that have traditionally limited materials?” Surjadi said. “This recognition reinforces my belief that the most interesting advances in materials science come from connecting ideas across fields. I hope to continue using metamaterials to explore these unexpected possibilities across diverse applications.”
The MRS Postdoctoral Award recognizes postdoctoral scholars who are showing exceptional promise, whether through research excellence, leadership, advocacy, outreach or teaching. The award is supported by the Jiang Family Foundation and MTI Corporation.
About James Utama Surjadi
Surjadi joined NUS in May 2026 under the Presidential Young Professorship scheme, after serving as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2022 to 2026. His research bridges mechanics, materials science and advanced manufacturing, focusing on the design, modeling, fabrication and characterization of multiscale metamaterials that unite exceptional mechanical robustness with multifunctional performance.
He earned his BE degree from the City University of Hong Kong in 2017, and his PhD degree from the same university in 2022, where he was one of three recipients of its Outstanding Doctoral Research Award. He has published in journals including Nature Communications, earning more than 2,000 citations.
Beyond academia, Surjadi is a co-founder of Super Bamboo Ltd., a sustainable materials startup that has developed a bamboo-based material it says is stronger than steel and that has been featured on the Cleantech 50 to Watch list. He has also been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in Healthcare & Science.
