Kenneth J. Loh
Faculty, Structural Engineering
Damage detection and localization, multifunctional materials, nanocomposites, scalable nano-manufacturing, smart infrastructure materials, structural health monitoring, thin films and coatings, tomographic methods, wearable technology.
Loh is the Director of his research group, the Active, Responsive, Multifunctional, and Ordered-materials Research (ARMOR) Laboratory. ARMOR Lab’s research mission is centered on designing, characterizing, and implementing game-changing, multifunctional material systems for safeguarding our critical structural and human assets. By encoding specific engineering functionalities within a single material architecture, they can be integrated with or even replace conventional materials to bear loads while simultaneously performing sensing, actuation, damping, energy harvesting, and/or healing. By pushing the frontiers of multifunctional materials and smart systems’ design, the ARMOR Lab focuses on building materials starting at molecular length scales while utilizing “bottom-up” assembly for tailoring bulk materials with precise and desired performance attributes. The research community will be able to achieve resilient systems that can sense, resist, respond, and adapt to various operating environments and multiple hazards through continued and innovative developments in multifunctional materials, scalable nano-manufacturing, and implementation/testing.
Capsule Bio:
Loh joined the Department of Structural Engineering at UC San Diego as an Associate Professor in 2015. Prior to this, he held the titles of Assistant Professor (2009-2013) and Associate Professor with tenure (2013-2015) in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Davis. He received his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2008. At Michigan, he also completed two M.S. degrees in Materials Science & Engineering (2008) and Civil Engineering (2005). His B.S. degree in Civil Engineering was from Johns Hopkins University in 2004.
Selected Honors and Awards:
2015-2016 University of Trento (Italy) Research Fellow (with support from NSF and ERC)
2015 Joseph Wang Award in Nanoscience (Cognizure)
2014 Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, UC Davis College of Engineering
2013-2014 U.S. Fulbright Scholar Core Program
2013 Achenbach Medal (IWSHM) 2013 SPIE Senior Member Honor
2013 NSF CAREER Award 2013 ASME Adaptive Structures and Materials Systems Best Paper Award
2009 ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop Fellow
2008-2009 SPIE Educational Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering
2008 Michigan Space Grant Consortium (MSGC) and NASA Graduate Fellowship 2007 Karen and Paul Van Weelden Award, University of Michigan
