Prabhakar lands young investigator award for structural material work

Pavana Prabhakar, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Charles G. Salmon Fellow of Structural Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has landed a 2019 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.

Prabhakar’s project aims to facilitate the design of lightweight structural materials to improve damage tolerance and resilience under extreme loading and environmental conditions in vessels, offshore structures, aircrafts and automobiles. Her work could help prevent catastrophic structural failures.

“To achieve this, the research will entail transformative advances in high-fidelity, mechanics-driven computational methods and fabrication techniques like additive manufacturing,” she says.

Prabhakar is one of 25 young investigator award recipients from across the country.