PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Yongjie (Jessica) Zhang was awarded a prestigious Young Investigator Award of $510,000 for the next three years from the Office of Naval Research for research excellence.
"I am honored and extremely excited about this wonderful award because it gives me additional research resources and exposure to some challenging real world problems,''said Zhang, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.
Zhang, one of 17 award recipients nationwide, was selected by the Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research for the 2010 Young Investigators Program, which invests in new faculty members at institutions of higher education who show exceptional promise for creative study.
The Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research provides the science and technology necessary to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps's technological advantage.
Zhang will use her grant funds to develop a novel algorithms and a software package designed to help improve and streamline ship design and analysis for the Navy. The research results will significantly improve the capability of early-design evaluations as well as complex analyses for a range of physics and applications in DOD/Navy research, such as vibration, acoustics and shock analysis.
"We want to develop tools and specially-designed geometric modeling and mesh formulas that will help in the construction and modeling of complex structures like Naval ships and submarines,'' said Zhang. At present, there are no simulation systems in use for automatically testing the product performance for some of these highly technical ship structures, according to Zhang.
"This is a wonderful award for an innovative and hardworking researcher, and we are extremely proud of Jessica's ongoing dedication to excellence,'' said Nadine Aubry, head of Carnegie Mellon's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Zhang received her undergraduate degree in engineering in 1996 at Tsinghua University in China, a master's in solid mechanics engineering in 2002 and a Ph.D. in computational engineering and science in 2005, both from the University of Texas at Austin.
About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the fine arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, and Europe. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.