Yifan Rao is a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. Her research in mechanics and soft robotics focuses on programming adaptive and intelligent matter through geometry, materials, and physical interactions. She investigates how thin films and slender structures deform, undergo mechanical instabilities, fold, and reconfigure, and how these behaviors can be harnessed to create adaptive materials and intelligent systems. Her work spans thin film mechanics, origami-inspired structures, wearable electronics, mechanical metamaterials, and soft robotics, integrating fundamental mechanics with experiments, modeling, and computational approaches. Her long-term vision is to establish mechanics- and AI-guided design principles for physical systems that can adapt their shape, properties, and function to changing tasks and environments, with applications in biomedical devices, wearable technologies, deployable systems, and intelligent robotics.