Ying Sun is a Chinese-American mechanical engineer whose research interests include interface and colloid science, thermal fluids, and multiphase flow. She is Herman Schneider Professor of Mechanical Engineering and head of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
Sun graduated from Tsinghua University in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in thermal engineering. She went to the University of Iowa for graduate study in mechanical engineering, earning a master's degree in 2001 and completing her Ph.D. in 2006.
She began her academic career as an assistant professor at Binghamton University; Zhiting Tian, a master's student at Binghamton at that time, has named her as a mentor. She moved to Drexel University in 2009, where she became Hess Family Endowed Chair Professor. In 2019 she began a term as a program director at the National Science Foundation, in the Thermal Transport Processes Program. She moved to her current position at the University of Cincinnati in 2022.
Sun was elected as an ASME Fellow in 2020.