Ryan Hurley, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Early CAREER Award, which recognizes early stage scholars with high levels of promise and excellence.
Hurley uses experiments, theory, and simulation to study the relationship between microstructure and macroscopic properties in granular materials, rocks, and concrete. His five-year CAREER award will support his project, “Quantifying Local Rearrangements and Their Effects in 3D Granular Materials,” which will address the hypothesis that certain features of local particle rearrangements can quantitatively describe the behavior of 3D granular materials.