 So, I get to introduce Junyun Zhang, she's an associate professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She joined us in fall of 2020 and if my memory serves my last dinner out in 2020 at the end of February probably was the dinner we had when we were interviewing you. And so then Junyun joined us and we saw her in two dimensions for many, many months and now she's here in three dimensions which is awesome for all of us. Junyun works in research topics that address the design and manufacture of composite material structures and also some work in bio-inspired soft materials. She's an NSF career award recipient and some of her work in modeling progressive damage and composites, one accolades from the Air Force Research Laboratories. She earned her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2014, so she went to the same school I went to which is great, did a postdoc there at the University of Washington and was an assistant professor at UConn and we managed to pull her away from Connecticut and bring her to West Lafayette. So again, congratulations, Junyun. We're looking forward to your chat or talk. Thank you so much for the introduction. I do remember my interview was on March 12th. That's probably the last day everyone in a normal operating mode and that's close to the spring break and after that everything shut down. I still remember when I flew back it's so hard to do grocery shopping because I went to the grocery store and literally everything that we need to purchase sold out, so I do remember that experience. So thank you so much for reminding this. I guess in this talk I will start from where I come from and share my journey to become a social professor here. So I was born and grew up in Shanghai, China, which is probably the famous voice of financial and trading sectors and also considered as the financial center of China. My high school is located at the downtown area of Shanghai. So I went to school but it's kind of like one block away from Fifth Avenue in New York. So it's a very fancy place. So when I was in the high school, I really enjoyed math and physics and started to develop my interest in aerospace engineering. I kind of inspired by a magazine I found in my high school library talking about aviation aerospace knowledge and the thing I really like is you can use very simple math and physics that we learn from the class and with that simple knowledge you can start to learn how an airplane flies and all kinds of fancy rocket science. I was very lucky to be accepted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University which is a very nice university focusing on engineering education. But in my early 20s, I also would like to see the entire world. I joined this Shanghai Jiao Tong University of Michigan joint program that gave me the opportunity to spend two years in Shanghai Jiao Tong and another two years at the University of Michigan and I will get dual degrees from both universities. So in the summer of 2007, I took a flight from Shanghai to Detroit and started to get my learning experience at the University of Michigan and this also opened up more opportunities that I can also get a major in aerospace engineering. So when I was at the Shanghai Jiao Tong there was no dedicated program for aerospace engineering. So it's really a wonderful experience for me as an undergraduate student to be exposed to multiple disciplines in aerospace engineering. I think at the time I have more interest in fluid dynamics, aerodynamics but also at the same time I'm very interested in control, navigation, material structures and overall the design optimization. I guess it's a professor-crossing expertise. And I did my undergraduate between 2005 and 2009. This is also a rapid development of many commercial airplanes that the airplanes become more and more efficient. So this is showing the intensity versus the model of airplanes and you will see in that timeframe the airplanes become very efficient, even more efficient than the car that we are driving. This coming towards, like I said, I'd be exposed to multiple disciplines in different concentration areas in aerospace and it came towards my undergraduate research experience in the summer of 2008 when I was a rising senior student. I spent the entire summer in my later PhD advisor, Antoni Wa's lab. The topic is actually very interesting. He challenged me to mimic an inside wing and using the time is very popular, the nanomaterials. So I went to the lab, fabric these wings and also challenged myself to perform some of the simulation work. When I even look back, I still feel it's fairly challenging at the time I learned how to do finite element analysis, how to do experiments, how to operate high-speed camera and how to do model analysis. So when I look back, it's still amazing and it also gave me tremendous opportunity to work with graduate students, PhD students to know the entire environment in my advisor's lab and later get my more and more interest in terms of material and structures. So this later to be my research focus that on the lightweight composite materials. So in aerospace, one of the portion for the structure design is to make a lightweight. That's the most critical factor in aerospace structures. So this is actually showing over the years how this lightweight composite materials being used for different models of airplanes. And especially when I did my graduate study from 2009 to 2014, it's also the time we see Boeing 787 and Airbus 350 that being used a lot of the structure by the composite. So very brief about my research, this lightweight material, the reason we call the composite is a combination of multiple materials. The advantage of it is a truly material by design that you combine the strength from the reinforcement but also the toughness of the binding polymers so you enter with a super lightweight but also high performance material. So I continue my PhD in this area at the time. We talk about how we can do material design with the computational model. So we did lots of experiments in the lab, including these very interesting impact experiments and also do a pretty interesting multi-scale progressive damage model for the composite structures. Just have a better way to understand how the material behave, eventually how the structure behave using this advanced material. So I took my academia journey start from a University of Connecticut in 2015. So unlike many people get the opportunity to do a fairly long, like a dedicated post-doc experience, I kind of took my academia job right at my graduation. And it's really hard, I would say, in this way, like you have to think about what you want to do, right? So the first challenge I will face when my previous work is more focused on the structure behavior is when I get into my new lab and I even don't have my specimen. So it come in towards a very nature towards, like, we have to do some manufacturing work and also realize like, oops, sorry, when we look into what's a composite, it's not just like we add in multiple materials together and we can create a structure component but we also need to consider the manufacturing defects and the variability in the whole process. So I kind of naturally switched my research more focused on the manufacturing process and how to have a high fidelity model to simulate this manufacturing process. This whole test is summarizing one slide but it's also a pretty challenge that I, like my first two, three years as an assistant professor, I feel like I'm more like a graduate student. I started to learn polymer physics from well-known faculty, like some well-known experts at the University of Connecticut talking towards my colleagues about how to do actually multi-physics simulations as my background is more on the structure side but I also need to learn how to do kind of the computing of fluid dynamics. And I'm very lucky that I got this position at Purdue in fall 2020 and Purdue is always well-known for the composites area that we get so many well-known faculty members here and the experts in the department. And also moving towards a very nice facility at the Composite Manufacturing Simulation Center that we get all these automated machines that pushing towards the next, my academic journey to pushing more towards the automation digital trains and the hybrid manufacturing and the more sustainable manufacturing decarbonization in our composite manufacturing process. I guess throughout this journey, the most interesting thing I was like to hear is that the very fun part of this job is to do the outreach. I always remember the time when I was a high school student, I wanted to learn aerospace. Now I start to get a position that I can enroll high school kids in my lab to be exposed to aerospace or new material, lightweight material like composites. And also go through the outreach like a museum projects that we interface with little kids, explore like these new material systems that are being used now very widely in the aerospace. I guess I don't know what I should say about my advice or my towards the entire journey become a social professor. But I guess the passion is very important. Like probably everyone like aerospace always have passion to build a flying airplane. And I think that passion is still carrying me down a very long journey and be confident about self and always step out your comfort zone. So to be honest, given this talk, I feel lots of pressure. I guess it will be more easy to have a technical presentation and then sharing my experience. But just like what our aerospace legend Amelia Earhart saying, the most effective way to do it, it just do it. So I give this presentation. I know it's not perfect, but I think I do it. So last night I had so many people I would like to thank. So definitely my family, we moved to Purdue to West Lafayette when my son was two months old. So it's a, I mean, when I look back, I don't know if I would do it, but yes, I did it. So the great support from my parents and my parents-in-law, my husband. And definitely to make everything happen is my great graduate students and some of them I sit here. Especially my several, the first graduate students in my lab who really trust me that I can lead the group and also thanks to Ryan Enos who actually helped to move from connected to Purdue, which won't happen. And it's so hard during the pandemic. And also my first graduate official PhD student here in Kinshaw. Got the students by student paper award when I never got when I was student, so. And that has so many postdoc and the graduate students and the graduate student working in my group. My PhD advisor who really bring me to this area my mentor here at the Purdue, Professor Baron Pipes, Professor Wenbin Yu and Professor Karen Marius really helped me to put together my package here because it's still a big transition. My great colleague at the University of Connecticut that really helped me to start my career in academia. And also my sponsors who really trust me like I always own my graduate to you can aerospace, the first company supported this work who trust me the time I even didn't have a model but they trust me I can do it. And also great support from our department our department had Professor Bill Crossley the Professor Tyler Thornman who also got tenure this year and also Professor Hashim Hassan helped me a lot with the new cost development here at Purdue and the great staff support without the help I won't be able to put together this tenure package. And also my second home at Purdue at the Compulsory Manufacturing Simulation Center which really make a few lots of comfortable when I was there especially during COVID helped me to establish my lab at Purdue. This is so hard but thank you so much. So with that I would like to take questions. Do you think we have some time for a couple of questions? And again congratulations. Thank you. I did have a question if we needed to start with one. So you know I've got a passion about aircraft as well and I went to Michigan as well. The coach now is the quarterback there so that kind of puts the date a little bit differently. But the idea around sustainability right so the lightweight composite materials is a huge key to reducing the energy that we need to fly the airplanes and so that's kind of the first level we need to pull. Then what happens going forward now when we're building these materials, composite materials have you started thinking about reuse and recycle and what do we do with the old airplanes? We can't turn them into beer cans right? So what do we do? Yeah that's exactly, I feel the opportunity, I feel very lucky to get the opportunity to work here. So the new machine that we are getting in were able to do fully automation but also do some more plastic materials. So this can be a good push because the some more plastic material once you heat back and can reform. And also with the composite manufacturing there's so many things, like tooling other material to make composite eventually will go to landfill. So with this highly automated system we can reduce these waste a lot and also really pushing towards a recycle of this material using some more plastic material technology. Thanks, do we have questions from the audience? Maybe I'll make a very quick question and comments. Dean Yun, thank you for the beautiful presentation. I think you had done excellent job in reflecting this journey and with the humble and the humor and also the insights about the challenges. So if you can't just share a little bit about what you wish to know when you just started this job. So in reflect three, six years ago and what we can help from college of engineering perspective to continue support your journey and to reach to the next level of the success. Sure, I think this is an excellent question as I kind of get started twice at two different universities. So I think the best support is to have more workshop on how to write a winning proposal. I think that is really useful, especially not everyone join have this position know how to write a proposal. Like I started to learn what is a proposal when I did my first interview. So I even don't know what is a budget or what is overhead. So I think that that is important and also creating a supporting system for assistant professor. I think it's also very important. I know I didn't join in a right good time like because of the COVID but I think I have a network of all the assistant professor. I think it's also very important because we really can support each other and we do collaborations on different research idea but support each other. And I think with the assistant professor we really want to expand our network. So when I started Connecticut it's kind of easy because the colleges have a smaller size but here Purdue is so big. I mean, even I still feel a little lost because it just too many experts and I think get the opportunity for new hire and assistant professor to have like a seminar or webinar in different departments. I think that would be also very beneficial for young assistant professors. Thank you.