Michael Sangid is the recipient of the 2021 C.T. Sun School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Excellence in Research Award.

The award is presented annually to an individual or team of faculty members in AAE to recognize high quality contributions in science and engineering. Sangid, the Elmer F. Bruhn Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was chosen by a judging committee comprised of AAE faculty. He will be honored during a faculty meeting on May 7 held virtually.

Elmer F. Bruhn Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Michael Sangid

“The C.T. Sun award is a tremendous honor. C.T. Sun has been a quintessential role model for excellence in research,” said Sangid, the principal director of the Advanced Computational Materials and Experimental Evaluation (ACME²) Laboratory. “C.T.’s rigor and commitment to impactful research is second to none. To receive an honor with his namesake, selected by my colleagues, is a great honor.”

Sangid expressed his appreciation to his graduation students for making their contributions, which enabled the recognition in research excellence.

Sangid’s research activities combine knowledge of materials science, solid mechanics and advanced manufacturing to solve complex problems in materials behavior and processing. His research group employs physics-based computational modeling and design tools, which are experimentally validated and verified. The goal of the work is to improve understanding and tools for designing, processing and lifing materials through simulation-based modeling of the microstructural defects.

“Professor Sangid is on a trajectory to become our nation’s and the world’s top researcher in designing and manufacturing critical aerospace components for extended life through detailed fatigue analysis in structures and materials,” one nominator wrote.

Sangid is pioneering new approaches to microstructure-based modeling and in situ experimental characterization to identify the deformation and failure of structural materials. His innovations are opening new ways to integrate the design, manufacturing and life analysis of structures and materials, resulting in increased efficiency throughout product lifecycles and enhanced optimization strategies.

Sangid has identified physics-based root causes of crack initiation from the materials microstructure and the driving force for small fatigue crack growth, which has garnered considerable attention from major aerospace gas turbine companies, a nominator said.

“He and his graduate students have worked with these companies to solve critical production issues and longstanding materials problems that have been leading sources of catastrophic failures,” a nominator wrote.

Sangid and his group have been praised for qualifying the structural integrity and lifetime components made by additive manufacturing with “unprecedented speed.” The work was “widely celebrated within the Department of Defense, as it typically takes 10-20 years to qualify a new material into application,” the nomination said. Sangid was honored with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director’s Fellowship for that work.