May 15, 2026
By Tracie Troha

Emily Sanders, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation.

The NSF CAREER Award supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. The award provides $662,045 over five years to support Sanders’ project, Patterning Hard Interlocking Particles to Achieve Soft Materials and Structures.

The research focuses on interlocking granular materials, which Sanders describes as a “3D chainmail of linked particles” that can behave like both soft and rigid materials depending on how they are deformed.

“Such a material system has very low stiffness, with almost fluid-like behavior at low deformation, but becomes very stiff as deformation increases in extension or contraction,” she said. “Thus, their mechanical response can be tuned based on the level of deformation, so that properties can be managed in real time. Not only that, careful design of the particles and how they’re linked provides additional knobs that can be used to tune their mechanics.”

The project aims to better understand how these materials deform and fail, while developing computational models and algorithms that could help engineers design structures with tunable mechanical properties and shape-shifting capabilities. Potential applications range from miniaturized medical devices to large-scale reconfigurable structures. Sanders said the work could expand the possibilities of traditional soft materials used in areas such as robotics, electronics, and advanced manufacturing.

Beyond research, the CAREER Award also supports Sanders’ educational and mentorship initiatives. A key goal of the project involves developing educational simulation codes that introduce concepts related to interlocking granular materials to graduate, undergraduate, and high school students.

Additionally, Sanders and her research team will partner with Georgia Tech’s Project ENGAGES, a workforce development program co-directed by Woodruff School Professor Tequila Harris and Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering Professor Edward Botchwey. The program brings high school students from Atlanta Public Schools to campus for long-term research experiences.

“Mentorship is inherent in these activities,” Sanders said. “Of course, the graduate students will benefit from the mentorship I provide as their advisor, but they will also have the unique opportunity to mentor high school students in research, an experience that shaped my view of an academic career when I was a graduate student.”

Sanders previously served as a mentor in Project ENGAGES while she was a graduate student at Georgia Tech and now continues to support the program as a faculty member.

“Early exposure to STEM is key to making students of the next generation aware of their STEM talents and attracting the brightest students to the STEM disciplines that will shape the future,” she said.

Receiving the CAREER Award marks a major milestone in Sanders’ career and will help shape the future direction of her research program.

“It’s huge,” she said. “I’m so thankful to the NSF for the opportunity to focus on fundamental questions that will help establish new directions in the fields of mechanics, architected materials, and optimization-based design, and guide my research program for years to come.”