Johnson wins Fulbright grant to fund research in France

MechSE professor Harley Johnson has received a Fulbright grant for 2014-15, as part of his sabbatical in France.

Formally known as the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Research Award, the grant is presented to select scholars and professionals from across the nation to do research in more than 155 countries around the world. Award recipients from overseas visit the United States to do the same.

Johnson’s submission was approved by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) and the Fulbright Commission in France. Together, they offer the coveted scholarships to young professionals and scholars interested in bolstering their educational experience during a year abroad. The commission in France is one of 50 bi-national Fulbright Commissions CIES works with to award grants.

The funding will enable Johnson to execute his research on materials for photovoltaics at CEA, the French national energy lab and at the Grenoble Institute of Technology, a technological university structure within Université de Grenoble.

Johnson received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1999, an M.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics from Brown in 1998, an M.Sc. degree in Solid Mechanics from Brown in 1996, and a B.E.S.M. in Engineering Science and Mechanics from Georgia Tech in 1994. He began his professional career as an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Boston University in 1999, and then he came to the University of Illinois in 2001 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. He was named a MechSE associate professor in 2006 and then a full professor in 2011. Johnson was a Cannon Faculty Scholar from 2003 until 2010, when he became a Kritzer Faculty Scholar.

In his research, Professor Johnson studies micro- and nanomechanics of electronic materials, mechanics of nanostructures, materials behavior in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and the mechanics of photonic materials. He leads the Nano-Electro-Opto Mechanics Group, which uses atomistic and continuum modeling methods to understand coupled mechanical and electronic or optical behavior.