Jida Huang receives NSF CAREER Award to research the design of programmable materials
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Assistant Professor Jida Huang has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award for the project titled “CAREER: Generative Design of Additively Manufacturable Structured Materials with Neural Process Encoding and Geometric Artificial Intelligence.”
The research focuses on architected structured materials (ASMs), which are highly engineered, often 3D-printed materials with internal architectures—like lattices or meshes—designed to control mechanical, thermal, or electromagnetic properties.
These materials possess properties that are not found in natural materials, such as high stiffness-to-weight ratios and enhanced energy absorption, and can be used in areas like medicine, energy, and aviation.
Right now, ASMs are designed as if they will be made perfectly, without defects. However, due to the ASMs’ intricate topologies and manufacturing process uncertainties, defects and imperfections are inevitable in the manufactured structures, severely degrading the ASMs’ effective properties.
“This project, our goal, is to fix that problem by improving how these materials are designed,” said Huang, director of the DREAM Lab at UIC. “Instead of assuming everything will be perfect, we want to design materials while taking real-world manufacturing errors into account. We will study how the material’s structure, how it is made, and its final properties are connected. The goal is to make materials that turn out exactly as planned when they are manufactured.”
To accomplish their goal, Huang and his team plan to create better design automation methods that include how design for 3D printing actually works, study how defects form and how they affect material performance, and use geometric artificial intelligence to design manufactured-as-designed structural materials.
“We believe we can speed up the design of custom materials and devices, improve 3D printing techniques, and create smarter, more advanced materials in the future,” Huang said.
The project also focuses on education. Huang will create hands-on learning tools, including virtual reality design platforms, to help students learn about engineering and AI.
“We are implementing an immersive hands-on learning environment and easily accessible design tools to broaden participation in design-for-additive manufacturing and AI in engineering design,” he said. “This project will support the development of a virtual reality-assisted interactive design platform, the involvement of undergraduate researchers, and the integration of K-12 and NASA outreach activities.”