Yongjie Jessica Zhang
Yongjie Jessica Zhang is an American mechanical engineer. She is the George Tallman Ladd and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor of mechanical engineering and, by courtesy, of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Contributions. Zhang's research involves geometric modeling, mesh generation, image processing, finite element method and isogeometric analysis. She has applied her research for biomedicine and in particular for analysing blood vessels and neurons, as well as to ship design and the design of fiber-reinforced composite building materials. Education. Zhang is originally from Henan, China, and earned a bachelor's degree in automotive engineering and  a master's degree in engineering mechanics at Tsinghua University. She then moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a second master's degree in aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences under the supervision of Chandrajit Bajaj. After staying on at the University of Texas for postdoctoral studies with Bajaj and Thomas J.R. Hughes, she joined the mechanical engineering department at Carnegie Mellon in 2007. Recognition. The US Association for Computational Mechanics awarded Zhang their Gallagher Young Investigator Medal in 2013, "for pioneering  research in high-fidelity geometric modeling and mesh generation with broad interdisciplinary finite element applications in computational biomedicine, material sciences and engineering". She also won a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2013.