UC San Diego structural engineering doctoral candidate Chengyang Huang won 1st place for the Best Student Paper Award in the 2024 Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems at the SPIE Smart Structures/NDE Symposium in March 2024.

Huang’s award-winning paper, titled “Improvements on Focused Tactile Feedback Using Time Reversal Mirror,” explores ways to improve touch sensitivity on commercial touchscreen devices. He built a prototype glass plate using a piezoelectric transducer array to create ultrasonic vibrations for better tactile feedback. Enhancements were made to eliminate audible noise from touching the glass and to widen the focus area, making it easier to detect vibrations. Huang is a student in structural engineering Professor Francesco Lanza di Scalea’s lab.

With the award, Huang received $500 to continue his research in ultrasonic-guided waves for non-destructive testing applications. He also collaborates with the haptics lab at information technology company CVTE. Huang received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, China, in 2019. His research interests include nondestructive evaluation, ultrasonic imaging, phased arrays, and signal processing.