Junsoo Kim Receives NSF CAREER Award

Northwestern Engineering’s Junsoo Kim is receiving the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the foundation’s most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. 

Kim, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, will receive $678,248 from NSF’s Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation. He is one of four Northwestern faculty members to receive the honor during this round, joining the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ James Gaynor and Keara Lane, and Jen Munson from the School of Education and Social Policy.

The CAREER Awards, dispersed to recipients over a period of five years, support promising young faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through the combination of outstanding research and education.

Through this work, his lab seeks to identify the theoretical limits of soft materials’ mechanical properties and design their molecular structures to approach these limits. This work could be applied to areas ranging from reducing plastic pollution to improving robotics, human-machine interfaces, and medical devices.

With his CAREER award, “Multi-scale Effects of Polymer Network Topology on Mechanical Properties,” Kim will investigate why soft materials like those used in tires, medical devices, and flexible electronics can crack and wear out. He will focus on how the internal arrangement of polymer chains and larger structural features influence durability. With this understanding, he aims to create new design rules for stronger, longer lasting, and more sustainable soft materials that produce less waste and perform more reliably.

“I am deeply grateful to the National Science Foundation for this investment in my research group and me,” Kim said. “This support will enable us to pursue fundamental scholarly work in the mechanics of soft materials, particularly in understanding how polymer network topology governs fracture and fatigue across multiple length scales, which will serve as a foundation toward more reliable and durable soft technologies.”

As a part of his project, Kim will integrate an educational program that trains students in mechanics and polymer science, develops learning modules that connect molecular structure to mechanical properties and engages students in interdisciplinary research.