Engineering Professor Nets NASA Award

Chih-Hao Chang, an assistant professor from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is one of 10 faculty members to receive an Early Career Faculty Award from NASA. The awards stem from the Space Technology Research Grants program and this year’s recipients include professors from Stanford University, the University of Houston and the University of Michigan. Each professor receives $200,000 funding per year for up to three years.

Chang and other honored faculty are expected to conduct research in areas aligned with NASA’s space technology roadmaps and any priorities identified by the National Research Council. This may include noble research pursuits such as extending and sustaining human activities beyond low Earth orbit, exploring the evolution of the solar system and expanding how we understand Earth and the universe.

Michael Gazarik, the director of NASA’s space technology program at NASA headquarters in Washington, described this year’s Early Career Faculty Award winners as an “outstanding group of early career faculty researchers, representing some of the most talented new faculty from the best institutions of higher learning in America.”