The Yang Research Group in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin is recruiting 1–2 Postdoctoral Researchers and/or 1–2 Ph.D. students to join our group in Fall 2026, Spring 2027, or Fall 2027.
We are particularly interested in candidates who are excited about research in (i) mechanical behavior of soft materials under extreme-rate loading conditions; (ii) machine-learning-assisted full-field deformation measurement and high-throughput experimental characterization.
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Interested positions will be associated with two recently funded research projects:
• Office of Naval Research Project --- Thermomechanical Properties of Tissues under Transient Loading:
Developing experimental and computational approaches to quantify the coupled thermal and mechanical response of biological tissues over extreme loading rates and time scales.
• Army Research Office Project --- Blast-Wave-Induced Traumatic Brain Injury:
Investigating the mechanical and biological responses of human brain organoids and cellular systems to highly transient, blast-relevant mechanical loading to establish quantitative connections between local mechanical deformation and neural electrophysiological responses.
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Qualifications
•For PhD applicants: We welcome students who are interested in experimental and computational solid mechanics and have a strong foundation in mechanics and mathematics. Strong academic performance in coursework such as statics, mechanics of materials, solid mechanics, and linear elasticity is helpful.
• For Postdoc applicants: We are particularly interested in candidates with strong expertise in at least one of the following areas: (a) Biological experiments, including experimental work with cells, tissues, biomaterials, or related biological systems; (b) Experimental solid mechanics, including dynamic material characterization, high-rate mechanics, optical measurement, high-speed imaging, or related experimental techniques; (c) Computational solid and/or fluid mechanics, particularly modeling of strongly nonlinear and transient phenomena; (d) Constitutive modeling of soft materials, particularly hyper-visco-elasticity.
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About UT-Austin: UT-Austin is ranked #6 for engineering graduate programs and #30 among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2026. Austin is a major innovation hub with a strong presence of high-tech companies including AMD, Intel, Texas Instruments, Tesla, SpaceX, and many others.
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About PI: Dr. Jin Yang has been an Assistant Professor at UT-Austin since August 2022. He received his B.Eng. degree from the Tsien Hsue-Shen Class at Tsinghua University in 2013, his Ph.D. from Caltech in 2019, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His honors include a United States NSF Faculty Early CAREER Award (2025) and the ASME Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Award (2023). Recent publications have appeared in PNAS, JMPS, CMAME, EML, and Experimental Mechanics. More information about our research can be found here: https://sites.utexas.edu/yang
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Interested candidates are encouraged to contact me at [jin.yang [at] austin.utexas.edu (jin[dot]yang[at]austin[dot]utexas[dot]edu)] with:
i) Curriculum vitae;
ii) Brief description of research background and research interests;
iii) For postdoctoral applicants: contact information for at least two references.
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