Story by the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute

Sung Hoon Kang, HEMI Fellow, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and associate researcher at the Institute for NanoBioTechnology, has been selected as a fellow for the 2021 U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program.

The U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship provides hands-on exposure to Air Force research challenges through 8- to 12-week research residencies at participating Air Force research facilities for full-time science, mathematics, and engineering faculties at U.S. colleges and universities. Kang plans to spend eight weeks at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio this summer. He will work with AFRL researchers to design and fabricate programmable aerospace structures that can morph to various shapes in response to dynamically changing mission environments in energy-efficient ways.

Kang’s AFRL project fits in well with his existing research portfolio. Kang and his group study how to control a material’s structure and properties at the nano/micro/macro level in order to develop next-generation materials and mechanical systems. His lab is working on projects including one to identify synthetic pathways for making multifunctional materials with self-adaptable mechanical properties and self-regeneration, which has potential applications to the design and manufacture of new aerospace and biomaterials.

Learn more about the fellowship program here.