Lihua Jin is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA. She was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, and got her PhD in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University. Lihua conducts research on mechanics of polymer materials, instability and fracture. She was the winner of the Haythornthwaite Research Initiative Grant, Extreme Mechanics Letters Young Investigator Award, Hellman Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, ACS PMSE Early Investigator Award, Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award, and SES Huajian Gao Young Investigator Medal.