Yunlan “Emma” Zhang Receives Air Force Young Investigator Program Award
The Texas Engineer receives early-career honor that will support work on architected metamaterials that adapt to changing mission demands.
Texas Engineer Yunlan “Emma” Zhang has received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Fiscal Year 2026 Young Investigator Program award, which recognizes promising early-career researchers and encourages their growth through creative research and exposure to Air Force and Space Force mission challenges.
The funding will support Zhang’s project, which turns structural instability, usually considered a failure mechanism, into a useful design feature for materials used in mission infrastructure. Zhang, an assistant professor in the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and an affiliate faculty member of the Texas Materials Institute and Center for Additive Manufacturing and Design Innovation, will lead the project with her group of graduate and undergraduate students.
“I am honored to receive this award,” Zhang said. By pairing instability-based architected metamaterials with principles from deployable structures, her team aims to build load-carrying systems that reconfigure and adapt to changing environments and mission demands.
Earlier this year, Zhang also received the Outstanding Technical Contribution Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Aerospace Division for her work on architected materials for lunar construction.