Mechanical Engineering Department Marks Major Achievements and Expanding Impact

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering continues to gain momentum through major faculty honors, prestigious student awards, and notable program developments.

From national recognitions and competitive fellowships to the launch of a new master’s program, the department’s achievements reflect its growing impact in research, education, and innovation.

FACULTY NEWS

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering added Bahador Bahmani and Naichen Shi to the faculty. Bahmani specializes in scientific machine learning for computational mechanics, and Shi focuses on distributed/decentralized optimization, personalized machine learning, digital twins, with applications in additive manufacturing and healthcare.

Wei Chen won the 2025 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Barnett-Uzgiris Product Safety Design Award.

Horacio Espinosa was named to the National Academy of Inventors.

Elizabeth Gerber was inducted into the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction Academy Class of 2025.

Ping Guo received the Chao and Trigger Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, and was elected a fellow of the ASME.

Yonggang Huang was named on the global “Highly Cited Researchers” list for 2025.

Junsoo Kim received the 9th Hanwha Non-Tenure Faculty Award and was named a Scialog Fellow for 2025.

Ryan Truby won the ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering Award and the Schmidt Science Fellows Community Leadership Award.

STUDENT AWARDS AND HONORS

Youssef Abdelhalim earned the 2025 Ovid W. Eshbach Award, a McCormick-level honor that recognizes overall excellence in scholarship and leadership to a graduate who, in the opinion of students and faculty, most closely typifies the ideal engineering student.

The department’s June 2025 Undergraduate Research and Innovation Award was given to Christopher Luey, the Undergraduate Academic Achievement Award went to Kieran Cullen, the Undergraduate Leadership and Service Award was won by Andy Wehmeyer.

Trevor Abbott and Victoria Israel were named on Chicago Inno’s 25 Under 25.

Yaoke Wang (advised by Ping Guo) won the 2025 Belytschko Outstanding Research Award for his thesis, “Design and Fabrication of Hierarchical Optical Structures Using Vibration-assisted Ultra-precision Machining.”

A department record five PhD students—James Avtges, Brian Delaney, Rohan Kota, Malachi Landis, and Fiona Ann Neylon—earned prestigious National Science Foundation and National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowships this year.

Graduate students who earned top honors include Ayesha Ahmed, Yi-Ping Chen, Vispi Karkaria, and Xiaoman Wang (Martin Outstanding Doctoral Fellows), Yi-Ping Chen (Mentorship Award), Shardul Kamat and Kyle Mumm (Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards), and Conor Porter (Leadership and Service Award).

The department’s Design and Manufacturing group received many awards at the co-located 2025 ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC)/2025 Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) North American Manufacturing Research Conference. (NAMRC) The winners include:

Fred M. Carter III (advised by Jian Cao) won the SME Shiv Kapoor Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award.

The team of Yi-Ping Chen, Robert Gao, Vispi Karkaria, Daniel Quispe, Faith Rolark, Ying-Kuan Tsai, Jian Cao, and Wei Chen won the NAMRC Outstanding Paper in Manufacturing Systems for their work “Real-Time Decision-Making for Digital Twin in Additive Manufacturing with Model Predictive Control using Time-Series Deep Neural Networks.”

Malachi Landis (advised by Ping Guo) won the MSEC Best Poster Award for “Development and Characterization of Dauber: Miniaturized Additive Friction Stir Deposition.”

Researchers Fan Chen, Jihoon Jeong, Shuheng Liao, Ruling Zha, and Wei Chen won the NAMRC Outstanding Paper in Manufacturing Processes for “Directed Energy Deposition on Sheet Metal Forming for Reinforcement Structures.”