Xin Zhang a Guggenheim Fellow
Professor Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE) has been awarded a highly prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, in recognition of her exceptional record of research in the fundamental and applied aspects of microelectromechanical systems and metamaterials.
Zhang was one of 180 scholars and artists to receive the honor, out of a pool of nearly 2,500 applicants. The fellowships are awarded each spring by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Past winners include Nobel laureates, Fields Medal winners, and other leading lights across academic and artistic disciplines.
“The work supported by the Foundation will aid in our collective effort to better understand the new world we’re in, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going,” said Guggenheim Foundation President Edward Hirsch. “It is an honor for the Foundation to help the Fellows carry out their visionary work.”
Zhang and her research group, the Laboratory for Microsystems Technology, seeks to understand and exploit interesting characteristics of physics, materials, mechanics, and manufacturing technologies with forward-looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to healthcare to homeland security.
Recent technologies to emerge from Zhang’s lab include a new metamaterial that can be shaped to block 94 percent of sound waves from a source of noise without blocking air flow, and a helical resonator array that can improve MRI image quality, potentially in less time and at lower cost.
Zhang has published more than 200 papers in interdisciplinary journals. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.