UH professor honored for materials research, STEM outreach

University of Houston mathematician Yuliya Gorb recently received a five-year, $420,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for both her research and an outreach program she's developing for high school girls. Gorb is the first Department of Mathematics faculty member to receive an NSF CAREER award while at UH.

Gorb, an assistant professor of mathematics, joined the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 2009. Her mathematical modeling, analysis and simulation are helping solve problems related to complex composite materials. These types of materials can be found in a wide range of fields from medicine and materials science to subsurface engineering and microelectronics.

NSF CAREER Awards are given to promising junior faculty members, who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research. In her research, Gorb is developing efficient tools, both numerical and analytical, for describing various phenomena occurring in a composite material.

"You can view a composite as a material consisting of two or more constituents," she said. "In particular, I'm looking at high contrast composites. That is, those with large variations in material properties and complex geometry. Such composites exhibit some features not seen or observed in regular materials."

Through the development of efficient numerical and analytical tools, Gorb says gaining a full understanding of a composite material leads to the possibility of "intelligent" tailoring of the material or an increased ability to predict a drastic behavior.

"For example, in microelectronics, you want a composite material that effectively reduces the heat but has enough conductivity for the processes to run," she said. "One of the bad features that these types of materials can develop is failure. I am trying to better understand this critical behavior of the materials through modeling, analysis and simulation."

She became interested in solving these types of problems while pursuing her Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University and has devoted a large part of her research career to this topic.

Another aspect of Gorb's CAREER award is student involvement. In addition to engaging UH undergraduates in her research projects, Gorb will launch an after-school program for 10th through 12th grade girls this spring that will showcase the essential relevance of mathematics to real-world problems. It's expected to give participants a better understanding of what the modern world and society have to offer them and will introduce career opportunities in the STEM fields of science, math and engineering.

Provided by University of Houston