An Assistant Professor at NC State University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering has been awarded the 2023 Initiation Grant from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Applied Mechanics Division (AMD).
Andrew Lee is one of five recipients of the $20,000 grant, funded by the Robert M. and Mary Haythornthwaite Foundation, which supports scientific research in the field of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Robert Haythornthwaite was a founder and first President of the American Academy of Mechanics.
The Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant Program is intended for university faculty engaged in research in theoretical and applied mechanics that are at the beginning of their academic careers.
Applicants must hold a tenure‐track position at the rank of Assistant Professor at a university in the United States and must not be more than 5 years beyond receipt of their doctoral degree at the time the award is made.
“The intent of the grant is to assist with the purchase of equipment or instrumentation, fabrication of a unique apparatus, travel, or other items that serve the proposer’s research objectives,” the grant’s announcement states. “The applicant is expected to complete at least a portion of the proposed effort within one year of the award.”
Lee plans to use this grant to continue his research in ultra-thin composites and their applications in large spacecrafts.
“The grant will support research in investigating how elastically packaged configurations of ultra-thin composite shells influence the instability that drives their deployment,” Lee said. “This is in application to large spacecraft structures that precisely position sensitive payload and instruments in a wide range of space missions.”