Kim Earns Scialog Funding

A project proposed by Northwestern Engineering’s Junsoo Kim and collaborators was one of eight chosen for funding by Scialog: Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials. 

Kim, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, will pursue the project “Healable Yet Durable Tires: Localizing Dynamic Interlinks on Particle Surfaces” with Josh Worch from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Micah Ziegler. Each receives $60,000 for their proposal.

Last year, Kim received the same award for the project “Synergistic Photomechanical Depolymerization.”

The leader of the Soft Matter Mechanics Lab, Kim works to understand mechanics in soft materials such as gels, rubbers, and their composites, identify the theoretical limits of their mechanical properties, and design the molecular structure to approach this limit. Previous honors for Kim include the 9th Hanwha Non-Tenure Faculty Award from the Hanwha Group (2023), Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow from the National Academy of Sciences (2023), and a Scialog fellowship (2023).

Short for “science plus dialog,” Scialog was created in 2010 by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). Scialog aims to spark innovative thinking by building a creative network of scientists in the US and Canada that crosses disciplinary silos, and by stimulating intensive conversation around a scientific theme of global importance. The awards – for interdisciplinary teams of early-career researchers – were funded by RCSA, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Kavli Foundation.