Jian Cao Elected an Asian American Academy of Science and Engineering Fellow
Cao will be formally inducted during the AAASE Biennial Summit in November
Northwestern Engineering’s Jian Cao was one of 10 fellows elected to the Asian American Academy of Science and Engineering (AAASE).
Cao, the University’s associate vice president for research and Cardiss Collins Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, will be formally inducted Nov. 7 during AAASE’s 2026 Biennial Summit and Fellow Induction Ceremony on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. The fellowship honors Asian American researchers who represent exceptional achievement across engineering, biomedical science, manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, electronic materials, and other fields.
“This honor is not just to me, but to Northwestern, students, and collaborators whom I have been so fortunate to work with,” Cao said.
The director of the Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation (NIMSI), Cao’s research interests in manufacturing have focused on deformation-based and laser additive processes. She has made fundamental contributions to the design and control of novel manufacturing processes, and the exploration of relationships between material microstructure and processing methods of metallic alloys and woven composites. Her research group has designed unique manufacturing equipment for microforming, dieless sheet forming, and additive manufacturing.
“Jian has distinguished herself not only through the impact of her research, but through the breadth of her leadership and service to the engineering community,” said Christopher Schuh, dean of the McCormick School of Engineering. “Her election as an AAASE Fellow is a fitting recognition of the many ways she has advanced manufacturing research while helping shape the future of the field.”
Cao was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. Her other major awards include the inaugural DeVor-Kapoor Manufacturing Medal, Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal and the Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Her other honors include SME’s Gold Medal and Taylor Research Medal and the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award from ASME and Pi Tau Sigma. In 2019, the US Department of Defense named Cao a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow, its most prestigious and competitive single investigator research award. She was also named a 2019 fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Cao’s service is equally extensive. She is a Council member of the International Academy for Production Engineering, an officer on the SME Board of Directors, and a board member of mHUB, a Chicago-based accelerator for hardtech innovation and manufacturing. She also has contributed to several National Academies consensus studies, most recently one examining the agentic AI revolution and its impact on the materials science and technology enterprise.