June 24, 2025
By Ashley Ritchie

Fan Zhang, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has received the 2025 Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award from the American Nuclear Society (ANS).

The award recognizes young members for outstanding achievements in which engineering knowledge is effectively applied to yield an engineering concept, design, safety improvement, method of analysis, or product utilized in nuclear power research and development or commercial application.

Zhang was selected by the ANS Honors and Awards Committee for her pioneering contributions to nuclear cybersecurity through innovative machine learning (ML) approaches, development of patent-pending technology, and efforts to establish Georgia Tech as a leader in the field. The award also recognizes her collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency and her groundbreaking research on robot-assisted nuclear power plant monitoring, which improves safety and efficiency and demonstrates exceptional impact on global nuclear security.

Zhang serves as the director of the Intelligence for Advanced Nuclear (iFAN) Lab at Georgia Tech. Her research primarily focuses on nuclear cybersecurity, online monitoring, fault detection, digital twins, AI/ML, and robotics. Her work on robot-assisted nuclear power plant monitoring, which combines these cross-cutting areas, could significantly reduce human worker presence in harsh and potentially hazardous environments and improve the efficiency of plant operation. The work was supported by the inaugural Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy Distinguished Early Career Award.

This is the second early career award Zhang has received from ANS. In 2021, she was named the Ted Quinn Early Career Award winner for her work in nuclear instrumentation and control and cybersecurity.

Zhang was presented with the Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award at the 2025 ANS Annual Conference, held in Chicago earlier this month.