Emerging Topics in Mechanics

Dr. Yonggang Huang

Yonggang Huang grew up in a family of mechanicians. His father Keh-Chih Hwang, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, is a professor of solid mechanics at Tsinghua University. Yonggang has two uncles who are mechanicians, one (a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering) on structural mechanics at Tsinghua University and another on fluid mechanics at Peking University. Yonggang is always introduced as “Prof. Hwang’s son” in China even nowadays.

Yonggang received his B.S. from Peking University in 1984. He came to the United States in 1986, and received S.M. in 1987 and Ph.D. in 1990 from Harvard University, advised by Dr. John W. Hutchinson. After a one-year postdoc at Harvard University, supervised by Drs. Bernard Budiansky and James R. Rice, he joined the University of Arizona as an assistant professor in 1991, and Michigan Technological University as an associate professor in 1995. He moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1998, and became a full professor in 2001, the Grace Wicall Gauthier Professor in 2003, and the Shao Lee Soo Professor in 2004. He joined Northwestern University as the Joseph Cummings Professor in 2007, and became the Walter P. Murphy Professor in 2015 and the inaugural Jan and Marcia Achenbach Professor in 2020.

Yonggang’s research has covered diverse topics such as microscale plasticity theory (1999~2006), mechanics of carbon nanotubes (2001~2006), mechanics of stretchable electronics (2006~present) and deterministic 3D assembly (2015~present). He has published more than 600 journal papers, which have been cited >80,000 times in Google Scholar. He is a Highly Cited Researcher in engineering (2009), in materials sciences (since 2014) and in physics (2018).

Yonggang is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a foreign member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Academia Europaea, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, the Drucker Medal (2013), Nadai Medal (2016), Thurston Lecture Award (2019) and Honorary Membership (2021) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); Prager Medal (2017) from the Society of Engineering Sciences (SES); and Bazant Medal (2018) and von Karman Medal (2019) from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Yonggang has taught a wide variety of mechanical and civil engineering courses, including “Production Engineering” at the University of Arizona, “Mechanical Design” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and “General Engineering: Statics” – a freshmen engineering course at Northwestern University. He has received awards and recognitions for undergraduate teaching and advising from the University of Arizona (1993), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007), and Northwestern University (2016, 2018, 2020).

Yonggang has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Applied Mechanics (JAM) since July 2012. Under his leadership JAM has become the fastest mechanics journal, with the average review time reduced to 16 days. He was the Chairman of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division (2019-2020), and the president of SES (2014).

Yonggang wishes that one day Prof. Keh-Chih Hwang from Tsinghua University could be introduced as “Professor Huang’s father”.