Honors and awards won by group
- SIGGRAPH Disney Best Emerging Technology Award, The Walt Disney, 2006
- Journal Cover Feature: Applied Optics, Vol. 45, No. 21, 2006
- Journal Cover Feature: Applied Optics, Vol. 47, No. 20, 2008
- Journal Cover Feature: Optical Engineering, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2008
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Letters, Vol. 35, No. 7, 2010
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 18, No. 19, 2010
- Best REU paper (2nd place), the 47th Annual Technical Meeting of Society of Engineering Science, 2010
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Letters, Vol. 36, No. 23, 2011
- Top 10 most cited papers published in the past five years, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2011 for S.Zhang, ``Recent progresses on real-time 3-D shape measurement using digital fringe projection techniques,'' Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 48(2), 149--158 (2010)
- Image of the Week: OSA Optics InfoBase, March 21, 2011
- Top 10 most cited papers published in the past five years, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2012 for S.Zhang, ``Recent progresses on real-time 3-D shape measurement using digital fringe projection techniques,'' Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 48(2), 149--158 (2010)
- Top 20 most cited papers published in the past five years, Applied Optics, 2012 for S. Zhang and S.-T. Yau, ``Generic nonsinusoidal phase error correction for three-dimensional shape measurement using a digital video projector,'' Applied Optics, 46(1), 36--43 (2007)
- Image of the Week: American Journal of Physiology, October 1, 2012
- Journal Cover Feature: Applied Optics Vol. 51, No. 18, 2012
- Named William and Virginia Binger Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, 2012-2014.
- Keynote speaker at ICCES (Crete, Greece), 2012
- Nominated for ISU Award for Early Achievement in Research, 2012
- AIAA Outstanding Paper Award, 2013
- Top 10 most cited papers published in the past five years, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2013 for S.Zhang, ``Recent progresses on real-time 3-D shape measurement using digital fringe projection techniques,'' Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 48(2), 149--158 (2010)
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 21, No. 5, 2013
- Top 10 most cited papers published in the past five years, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2014 for S.Zhang, ``Recent progresses on real-time 3-D shape measurement using digital fringe projection techniques,'' Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 48(2), 149--158 (2010)
- Top 20 most cited papers published in the past five years, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2014 for S. Lei and S. Zhang, ``Digital sinusoidal fringe generation: defocusing binary patterns vs focusing sinusoidal patterns,'' Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 48(5), 561--569 (2010)
- Journal Cover Feature: Applied Optics, Vol. 53, No. 33, 2014
- Image of the Week: OSA Optics InfoBase, November 3, 2014
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 22, No. 22, 2014
- Excellence in Reviewing, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, Elsevier, 2014 ( in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the quality of the journal
- ROBIO 2015 Best Conference Paper Award, IEEE Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Zhuhai, China, 2015
- Top 10 most cited papers published in the past five years, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2015 for S.Zhang, ``Recent progresses on real-time 3-D shape measurement using digital fringe projection techniques,'' Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 48(2), 149--158 (2010)
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 24, No. 7, 2016
- Image of the Week: OSA Optics InfoBase, April 12, 2016
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 25, No. 9, 2017
- Image of the Week: OSA Optics InfoBase, June 12, 2017
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 25, No. 22, 2017
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2018
- Journal Cover Feature: Optics Express, Vol. 26, No. 10, 2018
- ``Innovation of the Year'' Finalist, TechPoint Mira awards, 2018 (TechPoint Best Tech in Indiana)