Third CEAT faculty member wins 2019 NSF CAREER award

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Shuodao Wang, assistant professor in Oklahoma State University’s school of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been awarded the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program award, NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. Wang joins Jindal Shah and Ashlee Ford Versypt, both from OSU’s school of chemical engineering, as a 2019 recipient. 

Wang received his bachelor’s in engineering mechanics from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2007 and his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University in Illinois in 2012. He came to OSU in 2014. 

This CAREER award will support his integrated research and educational efforts on how material and thickness non-uniformity (also referred to as heterogeneity) in thin, bio-compatible materials and bio-tissues affect their mechanical behaviors under various conditions. Examples of such materials include ultra-thin wearable bio-sensors, the eardrum membrane and the heart valves. The award supports fundamental research that will enable a currently unavailable, non-destructive material characterization protocol for obtaining the material property maps, which will allow the deformation and stability of these materials to be better understood. The innovative approach in this project is expected to promote scientific advancement in new mechanics knowledge that is important for a wide range of health care and biomedical applications.

The project will provide opportunities to train graduate and undergraduate students in the interdisciplinary areas of mechanics, materials science and biomedical devices. The educational outreach activities are designed to engage young children and under-represented minorities in STEM education.

The CAREER Program offers awards to early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. NSF encourages submission of CAREER proposals from early-career faculty at all CAREER-eligible organizations, according to its website. 

Story by: Kylie Moulton