UCLA MAE Assistant Professor Lihua Jin received the 2016 Haythornthwaite Young Investigator Award. With funding from the Robert M. and Mary Haythornthwaite Foundation, the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME established the Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant Program, targeting university faculty engaged in research in theoretical and applied mechanics that are at the beginning of their academic careers. This year Professor Lihua Jin’s proposal on mechanics of photo-responsive hydrogels was selected as one of the top four proposals for the Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grants, and is awarded at the amount of $20,000. Robert Haythornthwaite was the founder and first President of the American Academy of Mechanics.
Jin’s research focuses on mechanics of soft materials, stimuli-responsive materials, soft robotics, and stretchable electronics. Jin joined UCLA in 2016. She was most recently a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University, and she received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.