Yonggang Huang Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

April 14, 2008

Yonggang Huang, Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Guggenheim fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 190 fellowships this year to artists, scientists, and scholars, with awards totaling $8,200,000. The successful candidates were chosen from a group of more than 2,600 applicants.

Huang received a fellowship for his work researching an atomistic-based continuum theory for nano-structured materials. An atomistic theory alone can’t be used to study the macroscopic behavior of nano-structured materials due to its limitations on time and length scales, and conventional continuum theories have no direct connection to atomic structure. A new theory would fill the gap between atomistic models and conventional continuum theories, which would further the development of nanotechnology.

One application of such a theory is to create flexible and stretchable electronics, such as flexible displays, electronic newspapers, or wearable systems for personal health monitoring. These macroscale systems all involve nanoscale components. “The atomistic-based continuum theory will help to push nanoscale research from science to technology,” Huang says.

Huang has already collaborated with researchers at other institutions to create a new form of stretchable silicon integrated circuit that can wrap around complex shapes such as hemispheres, body parts and aircraft wings. The circuits can operate during stretching, compressing, folding and other types of extreme mechanical deformations without a reduction in electrical performance. Their paper on the research was published online March 27, 2008 on the Science Express web site in anticipation of its publication in the journal Science ( See related news story). Huang’s group was responsible for the mechanical analysis that guided the design of the integrated circuits to prevent the mechanical failure and the degradation of electrical behavior of these circuits during stretching and bending.

Huang has received many awards for his work, including the Melville Medal — the highest honor for a paper from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers — for a paper on nanomechanics published in 2002. The award was given jointly to Huang and his father, Keh-Chih Hwang of Tsinghua University in China.