4/9/2024 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
Mohammad Naraghi is the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Recent Alumni award from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The award is given to alumni who have graduated in the past 15 years, in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in their profession.
Mohammad Naraghi earned his Ph.D. in 2009 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in aerospace engineering. His doctoral research delved into nanomechanics, focusing on the utilization of MEMS devices to explore the mechanical intricacies of soft nanofibers. His Ph.D. work earned him the prestigious Roger A. Strehlow Memorial Award for outstanding research accomplishments from the department.
Following his PhD, Naraghi served as a post-doctorate research fellow at Northwestern University. In 2012, he began his academic journey as an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, rising to the rank of associate professor in 2018, and on the path to promotion to the rank of full professor in Fall 2024. Additionally, he holds affiliations with the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, as well as Mechanical Engineering at TAMU, and he is the director of the Nanostructured Materials Lab.
“Academic positions, especially at peer universities, are very competitive, and the expectations from applicants keep rising. Graduates such as Professor Naraghi who lead successful careers in academia serve as inspiration to our current graduate students who are considering the pursuit of an academic career in the future,” said Ioannis Chasiotis who is a professor, an associate head, and director of graduate studies in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Chasiotis was also Naraghi’s Ph.D. adviser.
Naraghi's expertise lies in high-performance lightweight nanocomposites, nanomechanics, multifunctional nanomaterials, and the application of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, to nanomechanics.
Chasiotis said Naraghi has published 72 peer-reviewed papers, “which is an outstanding achievement for an experimentalist at his career stage.”
His awards include the Sandia National Lab Award in Characterization, Reliability, and Nanoscale Phenomena in MEMS. He was also honored with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award in 2015, and he served as a Faculty Fellow of the Air Force Research Lab in the summer of 2020. Naraghi was also recognized with the Texas A&M Engineering Station Faculty Fellow Award for the academic year 2022-2023.
His research receives funding from esteemed entities such as the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, Army Research Lab, Air Force Research Lab, and Qatar National Research Funds, in addition to support from the private sector.