CEE Assistant Professor X. Shelly Zhang (BS 12, MS 14) has received a $337,054 grant from the National Science Foundation to advance the quest for greener infrastructure.
“Civil structures built with carbon-intensive materials could produce a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions,” Zhang said. “Effective reduction of greenhouse gas can be partially achieved by the adoption of carbon-negative, bio-based construction materials.”
The project’s goal is to establish a theoretical, computational and experimentally validated framework to enable next-generation, carbon-negative civil structures with minimized life-cycle environmental impact and maximized structural performance. Through physics-based optimization, tailored fabrication and industrial application, the researchers will produce innovative structural solutions that yield negative net-carbon emissions, high performance and efficient material use, and effectively contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas and mitigation of global warming.
Zhang joined the CEE faculty in 2018. She is also an alumna of CEE at Illinois, having earned her bachelor’s (2012) and master’s (2014) degrees in the department. Zhang is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Her research interests are in the general areas of topology optimization, stochastic programming, machine learning, multi-scale metamaterials, additive manufacturing and 3D/4D printing. She directs the MISSION Laboratory (MultI-functional Structures and Systems desIgn OptimizatioN), which focuses on exploring topology optimization, stochastic programming, and additive manufacturing to develop multi-functional, resilient, sustainable, and innovative engineering infrastructure and materials for applications at different scales, from as large as high-rise buildings to as small as material microstructures.