Yonggang Huang

Education and career

Yonggang Huang received his BS degree in mechanics from Peking University in 1984. He moved to the United States to study engineering science in 1986, and earned his ScM and PhD degrees in engineering science from Harvard University in 1987 and 1990, respectively. He stayed at Harvard as a post-doctoral fellow for one year, and joined the University of Arizona as an assistant professor in 1991. He moved to Michigan Technological University as an associate professor in 1995, and to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1998. He was promoted to full professor in 2001, Grayce Wicall Gauthier Professor in 2003, and Shao Lee Soo Professor in 2004, at UIUC. He joined Northwestern University as the Joseph Cummings Professor in 2007, and has been the Walter P. Murphy Professor since 2015.

Research interests

Huang has been working on mechanics of materials and structures across multiple scales, such as the mechanism-based strain gradient plasticity theory, and atomistic-based continuum theory for carbon nanotubes. In recent years he has focused on mechanics and thermal analysis of stretchable and dissolvable electronics with applications to energy harvesting and medicine, and mechanically guided, deterministic 3D assembly. His work on the electronic tattoos has been reported by NBC Learn (the education arm of NBC).

Service to the academic societies

Since 2011, he has been the editor-in-chief of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters.

Huang is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Mechanics (Transactions of ASME).

He was the president of the Society of Engineering Sciences (2014), and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division, ASME (2015-2020), and a member of the Awards Committee (2016-2018) and Nomination Committee (2016-2018) of the Engineering Mechanics Institute, American Society of Civil Engineers.

Honors and awards

Yonggang Huang has been honored with many recognitions for his research in mechanics and mechanical engineering including the Gustus L. Larson Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2003, George W. Melville Medal from ASME in 2004, Young Investigator Medal from the Society of Engineering Sciences (SES) in 2006, International Journal of Plasticity Medal in 2007, the Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2008, Highly Cited Researcher in Engineering from Thomson Reuters and Honorary Professor from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2009, Charles Russ Richards Award from ASME in 2010, Daniel C. Drucker Medal from ASME in 2013, Highly Cited Researcher in Materials Science from Thomson Reuters and Honorary Professor from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2014, Highly Cited Researcher in Materials Science from Thomson Reuters and Honorary Professor from Southwest Jiaotong University in 2015, Nadai Medal from ASME and Honorary Professors from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and Nanjing Tech University in 2016, and Prager Medal from SES in 2017. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a member of US National Academy of Engineering. His recognitions for undergraduate teaching and advising include the Most Supportive Junior Faculty Member from the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Arizona in 1993; Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising from the College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007; and Cole-Higgins Award for Excellence in Teaching, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University in 2016.

Publications

Professor Huang is the author of over 500 publications in international journals, including journals in multiple fields such as mechanics (43 papers in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids), materials (15 in Advanced Materials, 8 in Nature Materials and 1 in Nature Review Materials), medicine (1 each in CELL, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Biotechnology and Nature Neuroscience and 2 in Science Translational Medicine), nanotechnology (8 in Nano Letters and 2 in Nature Nanotechnology), physics (2 in Physical Review Letters), and multidisplinary journals (9 in Science, 4 in Science Advances, 3 in Nature, 11 in Nature Communications, and 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).