News & Events

News

2022

  • Cluster Fellow Chanwook Park received MMLDT-CSET Conference Award, 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Chanwook Park received USNCCM16 Conference Award, 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Heather White Mechanical Engineering Department Certificate of Appreciation, Summer 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Xiaoyu Xie received Mechanistic Machine Learning and Digital Twins for Computational Science, Engineering & Technology (MMLDT-CSET 2021) NSF Fellowship, 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Xiaoyu Xie received 16th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM16) conference award, July 25-29, 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Yaoke Wang received NAMRC49/MSEC2021 NSF Student Support Award, National Science Foundation, 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Yunzhi Xu received NAMRC50/MSEC2022 NSF Student Travel Award, National Science Foundation, 2022
  • Cluster Fellow Yunzhi Xu received ICACC 2022 Registration Waiver and Travel Award, The American Ceramic Society, 2022
  • Cluster Fellow Yunzhi Xu received NAMRC49/MSEC2021 NSF Student Support Award, National Science Foundation, 2021
  • Cluster Fellow Yunzhi Xu received ICTAM 2020+1 Early Career Attendee Fellowship, National Science Foundation and U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 2021

2021

  • Cluster Fellow Kathleen Dreyer received Data Science Fellowship (2019)
  • Cluster Fellow Kathleen Dreyer received NSF GRFP Honorable Mention (2020)
  • Cluster Fellow Julie Nguyen received NSF Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship (2021)
  • Prof. Randy Snurr was named to the Highly Cited Researchers 2020 List by Clarivate Analytics.
  • Prof. Wing Liu and Prof. Zhengtao Gan held 10-week Summer Short Course and Research Undergraduates Experience (REU). A website titled “mechanistic-data-science.mech.northwestern.edu” has been requested.
  • A team led by Prof. Wing Liu and Prof. Zhengtao Gan was identified as Top Performer in Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Additive Manufacturing (AM) Modeling Challenge Series: Micro-scale Process-to-Structure Predictions ($52,000.00 cash prize donated to Northwestern University Mechanical Sciences Donor Advised Fund).
  • Prof. Jian Cao received Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal.
  • Prof. Jian Cao gave a Plenary talk at international conference on material forming.
  • Prof. Wei Chen received Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award, a joint award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Pi Tau Sigma National Mechanical Engineering Honor Society, 2021, to recognize outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering for twenty years or more following graduation.
  • Prof. Wei Chen gave a Plenary talk “Data-Driven Design of Engineered Materials Systems: Challenges and Opportunities” at 16th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USCCM) Conference, July 26, 2021, Chicago USA.

2020

  • Cluster Fellow Marisa Bisram received 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
  • Cluster Fellow Marisa Bisram received ME Graduate Leadership and Service Award
  • Cluster Fellow Marisa Bisram received DoD Smart Fellowship
  • Cluster fellows Sourav Saha (student of Liu) Umar Farooq Ghumman (student of Chen) and Lichao Fang (student of Wagner) won the Honorable Mention in proposal pitch competition organized by Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University.
  • Cluster fellows Sourav Saha and Umar Farooq Ghumman received the travel grant for attending WCCM ECOMAS Congress 2020.
  • Professor Jian Cao is the recipient of the 2020 ASME Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal, which recognizes significant fundamental contributions to the science and technology of manufacturing processes.
  • Professor Jian Cao was named as one of the 20 most influential professors in smart manufacturing by SME.
  • Professor Jian Cao receives the 2020 SME Gold Medal (Society of Manufacturing Engineers).
  • Professor Wei Chen gave the Jerzy L. Nowinski Distinguished Lecture, at University of Delaware, in September 2019.
  • Professor Wei Chen gave the conference plenary talk in 53rd CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems 2020, July 1-2, Chicago, IL.
  • ASME established the annual Ehmann Manufacturing Medal, named after Professor Kori Ehmann.
  • Professor Ping Guo receives the 2020 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award at the SME NAMRC conference (June 2020).
  • Professor Wing Kam Liu is selected to host the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) First IACM Conference on Machine Learning and Digital Twins for Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering.
  • Professor Greg Wagner gave a plenary lecture at the International Conference on Simulation for Additive Manufacturing in Pavia, Italy in September.

2019

  • Cluster Fellow Akshay Iyer gave a talk “NanoMine: Material Informatics for Polymer Nanocomposites” at NSF DMR-2D Data Framework Kick-Off Meeting, 25th November 2018
  • Cluster Fellow Samantha Webster received 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Cluster Fellow Samantha Webster is the 2019 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium: NSF Student Award Winner
  • Cluster Fellow Samantha Webster is invited to speak at Microscopy & Microanalysis 2019 on Advanced Characterization of Components Fabricated by Additive Manufacturing.
  • Cluster Fellow Anton Von Beek won the Best Paper Award, 45th ASME Design Automation Conference, for paper Van Beek, A., Tao, S., and Chen, W., “Global Emulation through Normative Decision Making and Thrifty Adaptive Batch Sampling”, ASME 2019 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC2019-98223, August 18-21, Anaheim, CA
  • In June 2019, Professor Jian Cao and her team of Professor Wei Chen, Isaac Daniel, Sinan Keten, and Wing Liu received the Distinguished Achievement Team Award for industry-university-government partnerships from the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office for their work with Ford, NIST, and Dow Chemical on integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) for composites.
  • Professor Wei Chen was elected to be a member the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
  • Professor Wei Chen has been elected to serve as the President of the International Society of Structural & Multidisciplinary Optimization (ISSMO).
  • Professor Wing Kam Liu is the leading guest editor of a special issue of Computational Mechanics Journal on “Data-Driven Modeling and Simulation: Theory, Methods, and Applications”
  • Professor Jian Cao was selected a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow, supporting blue-sky research with a $3M 5-year grant for her work on a “Manufacturing Process Compiler,” starting September 2019.
  • Professor Jian Cao was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
  • Professor Greg Wagner gave a plenary lecture at the International Conference on Fluid Flow Problems (FEF-2019) in April.
  • Wing Kam Liu’s two papers has been selected as highly cited papers by Web of Science (As of November/December 2018, this highly cited paper received enough citations to place it in the top 1% of the academic field of Physics based on a highly cited threshold for the field and publication year):  A framework for data-driven analysis of materials under uncertainty: Countering the curse of dimensionality, COMPUTER METHODS IN APPLIED MECHANICS AND ENGINEERING Volume: 320 Pages: 633-667 Published: JUN 15 2017, and Shape effect in cellular uptake of PEGylated nanoparticles: comparison between sphere, rod, cube and disk, NANOSCALE Volume: 7 Issue: 40   Pages: 16631-16646 Published: 2015.

2018

  • Cluster Fellow Yu-Chin Chan received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship award.
  • Cluster Fellow Stephen Lin was accepted to and participated in the highly selective Argonne Training Program for Extre Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC), 7/29-810/18,  hosted by Argonne National Laboratories (https://extremecomputingtraining.anl.gov/).
  • Professor Teri Odom became 2018 Class of Senior Member of the Optical Society (OSA). She was named one of three Cottrell Scholar TREE Award recipients for 2018 by Research Corporation for Science Advancement and received a 2017 ACS Nano Lectureship Award.
  • Professor Wei Chen received the NU Ver Steeg Faculty Award. This award recognizes one outstanding faculty member each year for their contribution of excellence in working with graduate students of The Graduate School.
  • Jian Cao is appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Materials Processing Technology.
  • Professor Wei Chen is appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Mechanical Design.
  • Professor Wing Kam Liu is appointed by the Vice President of Research to be the Director of the Center for Advanced Material Systems and Simulation (CAMSIM) which creates opportunities for Northwestern faculty, students, and researchers to expand the intellectual and societal impact of their fundamental research and educational philosophy by creating technologies that can be commercialized to meet global market needs.

2017

  • Cluster Fellow Jonathan Pfluger’s research is highlighted in Northwestern ​Helix​ magazine. He is an National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient.
  • Professor Ankit Agrawal was recently invited to give keynote lectures about his research on materials informatics and data mining at C-MRS 2017, Yinchuan, China, and MAPEX Symposium 2017, Bremen, Germany.
  • Professor Jian Cao received the 2017 Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award from ASME and Pi Tau Sigma, “for outstanding achievements in mechanical engineering for twenty years or more following graduation.”
  • Professor Wei Chen and her students received the editor’s choice award for their paper Xu, H., Li, Y., Brinson, L. C., and Chen, W., “A Descriptor-based Design Methodology for Developing Heterogeneous Microstructural Materials System”, Journal of Mechanical Design, 2014.  
  • Professor Wing Kam Liu is appointed to be the Director of Global Center on Advanced Material Systems and Simulation
  • Professor Greg Olson received the 2016 Tibbets Award from SBA to QT for successful technology commercialization.

2016

  • Professor Wei Chen and her students received the Best Paper Award from the ASME 2016 Design Automation Conference, for paper Yu, S., Zhang, Y., Wang, C., Lee, W-K, Dong, B., Sun, C., Odom, T., and Chen, W., “Characterization and Design of Functional Quasi-Random Nanostructured Materials using Spectral Density Function”.
  • Professor Wing Kam Liu received the 2016 the International Conference of Computational methods (ICCM)  ICCM Medal, the highest honor of ICCM, and delivered an opening plenary lecture
  • Cluster Fellow Stephen Lin received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Prof. Ankit Agrawal was recently interviewed by NextPlatform about the future of materials science research, based on his recent invited article in APL Materials special issue on Materials Genome Initiative. He was also featured in an introductory video explaining how data analytics tools can help in realizing the vision of rational materials discovery and design. See Northwestern EECS news articles for more information here and here.

2015

  • Cluster Fellow Orion Kafka received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Professor Wei Chen received the ASME 2015 Design Automation Award.
  • Professor Jian Cao, Associate VP for Research, is the founder and Director of Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation.
  • The core faculty of the PS&ED cluster have received multiple grants from the DMDII (Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute), a federally-funded research and development organization of UI LABS, to support PS&ED related research activities.
  • Professor Greg Olson is the co-director of the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD), a NIST-sponsored center of excellence for advanced materials research focusing on developing the next generation of computational tools, databases and experimental techniques in order to enable the accelerated design of novel materials and their integration to industry, one of the primary goals of the Obama administration’s Materials Genome Initiative (MGI).

2014

September

  • Best paper award:  Xu, H., Liu, R., Choudhary, A., and Chen, W., “A Machine Learning-Based Design Representation Method for Designing Heterogeneous Microstructures”, ASME 2014 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC2014-34570, August 17-20, Buffalo, New York, 2014.

August

  • Miguel Bessa received the Extension of the Fulbright fellowship and the NTAC workshop leader fellowship. 
  • Joseph D. Shaefer received the National Bruce J. Heim Foundation Scholarship (1 award given nationally), the National ASME Graduate Teaching Fellowship 2012-2013 (2 given nationally), the Bruce J. Heim Foundation Catalyst Grant (1 award given nationally), the Northwestern University Catalyst Grant, and the Martin Outstanding Doctoral Fellowship by the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
  • Jake Smith Received the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship.
  • Chen Wang was awarded the Martin Outstanding Doctoral Fellowship by the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
  • Shuangcheng Yu was awarded the Ryan Fellowship by Northwestern University.
  • Chen Wang, Shuangcheng Yu, Wei Chen, and Cheng Sun’s paper “ Highly Efficient Light-Trapping Structure Design Inspired By Natural Evolution”, Scientific Reports, 3, (2013), 1025, was Highlighted on National Science Foundation, Division of Civil, Mechanical& Manufacturing Innovation’s 2013 portfolio of Science, Engineering, and Education Innovation; and Featured on more than 16 media such as NBC News, Discovery News, Material Views, Materials Today, McCormick News, Daily Northwestern, National Geographic, etc.
  • Katherine Rorschach is awarded Northwestern Altair Fellow 2012-2013; she is also a recipient of NSF graduate research fellowship.