Zhang receives DARPA Young Faculty Award

2/24/2023

Assistant Professor X. Shelly Zhang has been selected for a prestigious Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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X. Shelly ZhangAssistant Professor X. Shelly Zhang will design, fabricate and validate next-generation wireless biomaterials with funding from a prestigious Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The award will provide funding of $500,000 over two years with a possible extension to $1 million in total.

“The DARPA Young Faculty Award provides high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research that enables transformative Department of Defense capabilities,” said CDR J.P. Chretien, DARPA Program Manager and YFA mentor. “We are excited about the potential for this area of research to advance healing and rehabilitation for injured military service members.” 

“These created biomaterials will be precisely programmed with responses under remote actuation, functioning as wireless robots to accelerate tissue regeneration and injury repair,” Zhang said.

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. She is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. She also received a National Science Foundation (NSF)  CAREER award in 2021 and a Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) award in 2023.

Zhang’s 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.


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This story was published February 24, 2023.