Zhigang Suo is the Allen E and Marilyn M Puckett Professor of Mechanics  and Materials in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  Professor Suo obtained his BS degree from Xi’an Jiaotan University in  1985 and PhD  in mechanical engineering from Harvard University in 1989.  He began his independent career at UC Santa Barbara, moved to Princeton  in 1997 and to Harvard in 2003. It was during this period that I became  aware of Zhigang’s work, when he attended some of our more  mechanics-oriented group meeting. Zhigang has been a leader in the  thermomechanical reliability of semiconductor devices, and did some of  the first mechanical analyses on soft matter devices critical to  haptics, robotics, adhesives, and human-machine interfaces. He is an  engaging public speaker and storyteller, and his talks generate  standing-room-only crowds at conferences. In this episode, we talked  about his trajectory in his career and life and challenges facing Asian  and Chinese American scientists and engineers.