Jian Cao
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jian Cao is a materials scientist and mechanical engineer whose research includes the mechanical behavior and manufacturing of sheet metal and woven composite materials, including dieless deformation and laser additive manufacturing processes.[1] She is Cardiss Collins Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University and director of the Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation.
Cao studied materials science and engineering and automatic control at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, earning a bachelor's degree there in 1989. She went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate study in mechanical engineering, earned a master's degree there in 1992, and completed her Ph.D. in 1995,[2][3] under the supervision of Mary Cunningham Boyce.[4]
After postdoctoral research at MIT, she became an assistant professor at Northwestern University in 1995. She was promoted to associate professor in 2002, and served as a program director at the National Science Foundation from 2003 to 2005. Returning to Northwestern, she became a full professor in 2008, adding courtesy affiliations with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2010 and with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2018. From 2012 to 2021 she also served as the university's Associate Vice President for Research. She was named Cardiss Collins Professor in 2016.[4]
Cao founded the Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation in 2015, and has been director since its founding. In 2016, she became a Senior Institute Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory.[4] She has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology since 2018.[4][5]
