AE Alum Earns GE Edison Pioneer Award

Aerospace Engineering at Illinois alumna Joyee Zhu has been honored with an Edison Pioneer Award from GE.

The award recognizes mid-career technical excellence and customer impact of GE technologists from seven businesses within the company. Zhu, PhD 01, represents GE Power & Water.

She joined GE Global Research Center (GRC) in 2001 after earning her doctorate under the direction of AE Department Head Philippe Geubelle.  From 2001 to 2009, she was a senior engineer and later a project leader.  Zhu then joined the Wind Blades, Nacelles & Spinners design group in Renewable Engineering of GE Power & Water in 2010 as a senior engineer, and was promoted in 2012 to Principal Engineer.

Currently a Principal Engineer for Renewables Engineering in GE Power & Water, Zhu provides leadership and support for wind blade design, testing, manufacturing, certification, and field issue resolution. She champions and guides advanced analysis methods usage and expands the team's analytical capability. She also uses her technical network across businesses to provide new solutions and fresh insight to long-standing technical difficulties.

At GE GRC, Zhu has led and participated in various composite projects with multiple GE businesses including Aviation, Power & Water, Oil & Gas, Plastics, and Healthcare.  In particular, she has led the composite fan case design/analysis team in GRC. Zhu worked closely with Aviation design engineers to develop the first-of-its-kind carbon/epoxy composite fan containment system for GEnx-1B and -2B engines that power Boeing 787 and 747-8 aircraft, respectively. Using carbon/epoxy composites in fan containment enables more than 300 pounds of weight reduction per engine.

At Renewable Engineering in GE power & Water, Zhu contributed to carbon blade design and development for GE1.6-100 wind turbines that have the best-in-class capacity factor. GE’s 1.6-100 wind turbines offer a 47 percent increase in swept area when compared to last generation, the 1.6-82.5 turbine, resulting in a 20 percent increase in Annual Energy Production (AEP) at 7.5 m/s.

Zhu was born in Mainland China. A big family –many of whom were engineers – influenced Zhu and she knew she wanted to be an engineer from a very young age. At 17, she left her hometown on the journey to her career.She earned a bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and a master’s degree at Nangyang Technological University in Singapore before coming to Illinois and working with Geubelle.

“Joyee was my first PhD student,” he said. “She worked on the modeling and optimization of the manufacturing of composite materials. In particular, she worked on capturing the effect of residual stresses on the final shape of the composite part.” Zhu was the 2008 winner of the AE Outstanding Recent Alumnus Award.

Zhu now lives in South Carolina with her husband and twin daughters.