Dr. Yimin Mao is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Maryland (UMD), College Park; and an instrument scientist of small-angle and ultra-small-angle neutron scattering (SANS and USANS) at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Dr. Mao earned his Ph. D. degree in Chemistry in 2011 from the Stony Brook University. His thesis research was to use synchrotron X-ray scattering to investigate polymer deformation. Before joining NIST/UMD, Dr. Mao was a postdoctoral researcher at the Photon Sciences Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) from 2011 to 2013; and at the School of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology from 2013 to 2015. The main research theme of Dr. Mao is to understand structure-processing-property relationship of materials by characterizing multi-scale structure and dynamics, using different scattering (including neutron, X-ray, and light scattering) and spectroscopic probes. His current research focus is on natural polymers, including cellulose and chitin, their structures and functionalization via green chemistry.