Yonggang Huang

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, became the Walter P. Murphy Professor in 2015, and has been the Jan and Marcia Professor of Mechanical Engineering since 2020.

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[2] has been reported by NBC Learn (the education arm of NBC).

Since 2011, he has been the editor-in-chief of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters.[3]

Huang is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Mechanics (Transactions of ASME),[4] and has transformed the journal to be the fastest one in mechanics. For example, among all papers submitted in 2017, the average time from submission to final decision (i.e., reject or accept) is less than 16 days, which include the time for review and the time for the authors’ revision (if needed).

He was the president of the Society of Engineering Sciences (2014);[5] the Chair (2019-2020) and a member (2015-2020) of the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division, a member of the Drucker Medal Committee (2014) and Nadai Medal Committee (2017-2019), ASME; a member of the Awards Committee (2016-2018) and Nomination Committee (2016-2018) of the Engineering Mechanics Institute,[6] and Bazant Medal Committee (2020), American Society of Civil Engineers. He is a member of the Eshelby Award Committee (2012-); the US National Committee of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (2018-2022), the Pi Tau Sigma Awards Committee (2018-2022) and the Award Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division (2020-2025), ASME.

Yonggang Huang is a member of US National Academy of Engineering, a member of US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts,[7] a foreign member of Academia Europaea,[8] and a foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences.[9] He has been honored with many recognitions for his research in mechanics and mechanical engineering including the Larson Award[10] (2003), Melville Medal[11] (2004), Richards Award[12] (2010), Drucker Medal[13] (2013), Nadai Medal[1] (2016), and Thurston Lecture Award[14] (2019) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); Young Investigator Medal[15] (2006) and Prager Medal[16] (2017) from the Society of Engineering Sciences (SES[17]); International Journal of Plasticity Medal (2007); the Guggenheim Fellowship[18] (2008) from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; and Bazant Medal[19] (2018) and von Karman Medal[20] (2019) from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He is a Highly Cited Researcher in Engineering[21] (2009), in Materials Science and Engineering (2014-), and in Physics (2018). He has been awarded the Honorary Professor from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Southwest Jiaotong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Xiangtan University, Beihang University and Shanghai University. 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; On the list of “Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students” in Spring 2003, Spring and Fall 2004, Spring 2005, Fall 2006, and Spring 2007, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising from the College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007; Cole-Higgins Award for Excellence in Teaching, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University in 2016; and Associated Student Government Faculty and Administrator Honor Roll, Northwestern University, 2018-2019.

Professor Huang is the author of over 600 publications in international journals, including journals in multiple fields such as mechanics (48 papers in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids), electronics (2 in Nature Electronics), materials (24 in Advanced Materials, 9 in Nature Materials, 1 each in Nature Reviews Materials and Matter), medicine (1 each in CELL and Neuron, 2 in Nature Biotechnology, 2 in Nature Medicine, 2 in Nature Neuroscience, 6 in Science Translational Medicine and 6 in Nature Biomedical Engineering), nanotechnology (12 in ACS Nano, 8 in Nano Letters and 2 in Nature Nanotechnology), physics (2 in Physical Review Letters), and multidisplinary journals (10 in Science, 14 in Science Advances, 5 in Nature, 15 in Nature Communications, 1 in Nature Protocols and 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).