Assistant Professor X. Shelly Zhang has been named a David C. Crawford Faculty Scholar. The appointment recognizes faculty members who excel in their scholarly and service contributions to the Civil and Environmental Engineering department. Zhang was cited for her teaching and for building a strong, independent research program as a junior faculty member. She will become a David S. Crawford Faculty Scholar effective August 16, 2023.
Zhang earned a B.S. (2012) in Civil Engineering and M.S. (2014) in Structural Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. (2018) in Structural Engineering from Georgia Tech. She joined the CEE at Illinois faculty in 2019, where her research interests are in the general areas of topology optimization, programmable multi-functional metamaterials, additive manufacturing, data-driven models, multi-scale materials and structures, and 3D/4D printing. She directs the MISSION Laboratory (MultI-functional Structures and Systems desIgn OptimizatioN).
She holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and is a Faculty Fellow with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Among her honors, Zhang is the recipient of the 2021 National Science Foundation CAREER award, 2022 DARPA Young Faculty Award, 2023 Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator award, and the 2022 Journal of Applied Mechanics Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.