We are pleased to announce that Dr. Hongyi Xu, IDEAL Alumni, has recently earned the NSF Early Faculty award. Dr. Xu received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2014 (advised by Dr. Wei Chen) and is now an assistant professor at University of Connecticut. The award was given for his work on Bridging the Gap between Deterministic and Stochastic Structures for Mixed Stochasticity System Design. The overarching research goal of this project is to create a novel computational framework that bridges the gap between deterministic and stochastic structures by establishing a unified design space that covers structural patterns whose stochasticity ranges from random to regular. More information about his award are available at: University Faculty Selected for NSF Early Career Award