Stevens Institute of Technology: Stevens Assistant Professor Earns $500,000 NSF CAREER Award

Annie Xian Zhang will investigate how relative twist angles affect the thermal properties of graphene and provide STEM outreach at Stevens and in the community.

Imagine a transparent, skin-like wearable device that’s incredibly thin, super flexible and packed with microelectronics that can monitor your personal health information and send that data to your doctor. That’s the technology assistant professor of mechanical engineering Annie Xian Zhang is helping bring to reality in her Nano Research Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Thanks to a $500,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation, which supports early-career faculty who are academic role models, Zhang will investigate how “twisting” two sheets of graphene can alter the thermal properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials and push the limits of thermal modulation