The award recognizes sustained excellence in editorial service in the volume, quality, and speed of the peer review.

ME Associate Professor Dr. Chao Hu has been selected as a 2025 Associate Editor of the Year for the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD). The award recognizes Associate Editors who have made outstanding contributions to the journal in terms of the quantity, quality, and turnaround time of papers coordinated during the past year.

It is a distinction that says as much about the discipline of the work as the volume of it. Every paper an Associate Editor handles represents a chain of decisions, from identifying reviewers with the right expertise, to weighing conflicting recommendations, and returning a defensible verdict to authors who are often waiting on it for a degree, a grant renewal, or a tenure case. Doing that well, at scale, and quickly is a form of service that rarely announces itself. JMD’s award exists precisely to make it visible.

Dr. Hu is the Collins Aerospace Professor in Engineering Innovation and an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering at UConn. He has served as an Associate Editor for JMD since 2022 and is currently serving his second three-year term.

A long record of service

Hu has a long record of service to ASME and the design automation community. He has been a member of the ASME Design Automation Executive Committee since 2021. His service to JMD began well before his appointment as an Associate Editor: he has been a regular reviewer for the journal since 2011 and received the ASME Reviewers of the Year Award in 2019.

The fourteen-year time frame, from first-time reviewer to award-winning editor, traces a path that is increasingly rare and increasingly needed. Peer review depends on researchers who are willing to invest in a journal over the long term, and Hu’s history with JMD reflects that kind of commitment to the field’s shared infrastructure.

Research at the intersection of design and uncertainty

Prof. Hu’s research focuses on engineering design under uncertainty, battery health diagnostics and prognostics, and machine and structural health monitoring. The through-line across these areas is a practical one: engineered systems degrade, operating conditions vary, and models are imperfect. His work develops methods for designing and monitoring systems that must perform reliably anyway, which is a task with direct consequences for electrified transportation, aerospace structures, and manufacturing equipment alike.

At UConn, he is part of a strong design group in Mechanical Engineering that consists of more than 10 tenure-track faculty, giving the school unusual depth in design theory, optimization, and reliability.

In addition to his role with JMD, Hu serves as a Senior Editor for Engineering Optimization and as a Review Editor for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.

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by Sarah Redmond.

His research could improve the efficiency and reliability of technologies ranging from aircraft and transportation systems to electronics cooling and data centers

Mechanical engineering assistant professor Chang Liu has received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the agency’s highest honor supporting early-career faculty who demonstrate exceptional potential as both researchers and educators.

The award recognizes Liu’s innovative work at the intersection of fluid dynamics, nonlinear systems, and control theory while supporting a research and education program that could improve the performance and efficiency of technologies ranging from aircraft to data centers.

Liu’s project, “CAREER: Nonlinear Stability, Input-Output Analysis, and Control of Time-Varying Wall-Bounded Shear Flows,” will develop new mathematical frameworks to better understand fluid flows that change over time, a longstanding challenge in engineering that affects everything from transportation and energy systems to electronics cooling.

 

 

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Her central contribution is the development of rigorous multiscale frameworks that connect molecular structure, statistical mechanics, and macroscopic behavior across complex materials.

 

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has recently recognized a UConn College of Engineering faculty member for her early career contributions in advancing mechanical characterization and multiscale description of biomaterials.

School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering associate professor Anna Tarakanova was selected to receive the Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award.

The award recognizes early career research excellence in the areas of experimental, computational, and theoretical mechanics and materials. Young investigators (within 10 years after their Ph.D. degree) are honored with this award, which also has a special emphasis placed on under-represented groups.

Offered through ASME, the award was established in 2008 by their materials division.

 

 

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by Sarah Redmond.

SeungYeon Kang has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for her work on transforming how microscopic electronic devices are built.

SeungYeon Kang, an assistant professor in the UConn School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering, is working to transform how microscopic electronic devices are built. This research could help power a new generation of smaller, faster, and more efficient technologies.

Kang has received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her project, “3D One-step Heterogeneous Manufacturing for Integrated Circuits (3D OHMIC).” This award will help support her research on advanced manufacturing processes that operate at the micro and nanoscale.

“At its core, this project is simple but fundamental,” says Kang. “We build most electronics in flat, two-dimensional layers, even though the world around us is three-dimensional. This makes devices harder to miniaturize, slower to produce, and more resource-intensive.”

 

 

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