Mechanical and material engineering assistant professor Liying Jiang has been named The University of Western Ontario’s Petro-Canada Young Innovator for 2011-12.
Jiang’s research interests cover a wide range in solid and applied mechanics and materials engineering. Particularly, her interests are concentrated on nanocomposites and carbon nanotubes.
She obtained her B.Sc. degree in mechanics and mechanical engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1994 and master’s degree in astronautical engineering and mechanics from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China in 1997, respectively. She earned her PhD in mechanical engineering from University of Alberta in 2005.
From January 2005 to August 2006, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow under the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
She joined Western in September 2006, and is the recipient of the NSERC University Faculty Award (UFA). The Petro-Canada award comes with $12,500 to further her research.
The Petro-Canada program provides awards to new researchers – one at Western, one at Robarts Research Institute – to recognize and support particularly innovative work that not only impacts positively the learning environment in their department, but society at large. This program is intended to attract and retain bright young minds to Canadian universities, colleges and major research institutes and help young researchers launch their scholarly careers.
