You are cordially invited to attend a reception in honor of Professor John W. Hutchinson during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.  Download a printable version of this invitation.

Monday, 3 November 2008, 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm

Room: Fairfax A/B, Sheraton Boston Hotel & Towers, 39 Dalton Street, Boston, MA, Phone:  617-236-6039

Professor Choon Fong Shih, President, National University of Singapore; Founding President, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

For lasting contributions to mechanics, and for building bridges between disciplines and between nations

Professor Shih Choon Fong received his PhD from Harvard University in 1973, after which he joined GE’s Corporate Research Lab, where he later led its Fracture Research Group. In 1981, Shih took up a faculty position at Brown University, becoming a full professor five years later. After 30 years in the US, Shih returned to Singapore, his birthplace, as the founding Director of the national-level Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. In 2000, Shih took office as Vice-Chancellor and President of the National University of Singapore (NUS). In December 2008, Shih will become founding President of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

Sia Nemat-Nasser, Distinguished Professor of Mechanics and Materials, The University of California, San Diego

For fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions in: dynamic stability; deformation and failure modes of materials; nano-electro-chemo-mechanical characterization and modeling of ionic polymer metal composites; and composites with integrated tuned electromagnetic functionality, self-healing, and self-sensing.

Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser earned his B.S. in Engineering from Sacramento State University, followed by M.S in Civil Engineering and Ph.D. in Structural Engineering, both from the University of California, Berkeley, while serving as an assistant professor in Civil Engineering at Sacramento State University. Sia then undertook a post-doctoral assignment at Northwestern University, leading to his first appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego, followed by fifteen years at Northwestern University as Professor of Civil Engineering and Applied Mathematics. He went back in 1985 to the University of California, San Diego, where he is Distinguished Professor of Mechanics and Materials.

Richard D. James, Russell J. Penrose Professor, University of Minnesota

For pioneering the modern vision of phase transformations and materials instabilities in solids.

Professor Richard D. James received a Sc.B. in Engineering from Brown University in 1974, and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 1979. He was appointed as Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota in 1979, and Assistant Professor at Brown University in 1981. In 1985, he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota, where he is now the Russell J. Penrose Professor.

Ali Hasan Nayfeh, University Distinguished Professor, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

For seminal analytical and experimental contributions to nonlinear dynamics and structural mechanics

Professor Ali Hasan Nayfeh was born in Shuwaikah, Jordan, on 21 December 1933. After enrolling in 1959, he received B.S. in Engineering Science in 1962, M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1963, and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1964, all from Stanford University and all in a period of five years. After graduation, he worked at Heliodyne Corporation and Aerotherm Corporation. He then joined the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 1971, and has been a University Distinguished Professor of Engineering since 1976.

Thomas C.T. Ting, Professor Emeritus, the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Consulting Professor, Stanford University

For significant contributions to the development of the Stroh formalism of anisotropic elasticity, and to the analyses of several fundamental inelastic and wave propagation problems

Professor Thomas C.T. Ting received B.S. in Civil Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1956, and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 1962. He was appointed as Assistant Professor at Brown University between 1963 and 1965. He then joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was promoted through the academic ranks to Professor in 1970. He has been Professor Emeritus since 2001. He has received visiting appointments at a number of universities, including National Taiwan University, The University of East Anglia, University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui, Tongji University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Sanford University.

Professor Chad M. Landis, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Texas at Austin

For outstanding contributions to the mechanics of active materials

Professor Chad Landis received his bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and business from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. He then went on to earn his MS (1997) and PhD (1999) degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara. After spending a year and a half at Harvard University as a post-doc, he then went to Rice University where he was a member of the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science faculty from 2000-2006. He is now an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin.

The deadline for early-bird registration, with a $50 saving, is 28 August 2008.  Please consider to register for the Applied Mechanics Division Honors & Awards Banquet to meet your friends, and to congratulate the winners. 

Dusan Krajcinovic received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Belgrade (1958, 1966) and his PhD in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University in 1968, working with Prof. George Hermann.

Dusan’s brilliant and successful career focused on mechanics of materials, and structural analysis and design. He worked at Ingersoll Rand Research Inc. (1969) and Argonne National Laboratory (1973), before becoming Professor of Civil Engineering at University of Illinois, Chicago, IL (1973-1989) and then Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU), until retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2004.

He pursued and inspired research with the discipline and passion typical of a professional athlete (when a youth, was a soccer player in Yugoslavia). A prolific writer, he co-authored over 200 publications, and published a book on damage mechanics, which is a comprehensive reference on the subject of continuum and discrete theories of damage mechanics (with over 700 pages).

2008-2009 Awards.  The AMD Executive Committee is now seeking nominations for the awards listed below. Detailed descriptions of the Society Level awards and procedures for nominations are indicated on the ASME website. http://www.asme.org/Governance/Honors/SocietyAwards/ Please submit a second copy of all nominations directly to D. J. Inman, AMD Chair, CIMSS MS 0261, 310 Durham Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, Phone: 540-231-4709, FAX: 540-231-2903, e-mail: dinman@vt.edu by the deadline of October 10, 2008 or sooner. Submission by e-mail is preferred.

It has come to our attention that some users cannot post comments using Internet Explorer.  You can fix the problem by clearing the cache of IE.  The steps for IE 7 are

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Many of you must have noticed that the iMechanica server is unstable today.  Apparently posts that have comments are inaccessible.  The IT office has been altered, but today is Saturday.  Meanwhile you can read comments by clicking "comments at a glance" on the right side of iMechanica.  Toddler iMechanica is having growing pain.  She apologizes for your inconvenience. 

The April issue of the IEEE Spectrum featured the recently re-named Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the man who made it happen:  Dean Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti.  With incredible energy and ingenuity, Dean Venky has been leading his colleagues to build up Engineering at Harvard.  He has to answer obvious questions:  How would Harvard make a mark in engineering with the mighty Massachusetts Institute of Technology just down the street? And why would Harvard, essentially a liberal arts college, want to do engineering anyway?  To learn about the man and his answers, read the Spectrum article.    The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has been the host of iMechanica. 

(This message was sent to iMechanica by Ken Chong, of the National Science Foundation).  This letter is to call your attention to an opportunity to broaden participation particularly of underrepresented students in Ph.D. programs in engineering through supplements to current research grants funded by the divisions in the Directorate for Engineering (ENG) at the National Science Foundation.

James Monroe Gere, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at Stanford University, died in Portola Valley, CA, on January 30, 2008. Jim Gere was born on June 14, 1925, in Syracuse, N.Y. He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 17 in 1942, serving in England, France and Germany. After the war, he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He worked as an instructor and later as a Research Associate for Rensselaer between 1949 and 1952. He was awarded one of the first NSF Fellowships, and chose to study at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in 1954 and was offered a faculty position in Civil Engineering, beginning a 34-year career of engaging his students in challenging topics in mechanics, and structural and earthquake engineering. He served as Department Chair and Associate Dean of Engineering and in 1974 co-founded the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford. In 1980, Jim Gere also became the founding head of the Stanford Committee on Earthquake Preparedness, which urged campus members to brace and strengthen office equipment, furniture and other contents items that could pose a life safety hazard in the event of an earthquake. That same year, he was invited as one of the first foreigners to study the earthquake-devastated city of Tangshan, China. Jim retired from Stanford in 1988 but continued to be a most valuable member of the Stanford community as he continued to give freely of his time to advise students and to guide them on various field trips to the California earthquake country.

Update:  See a press release and photos.  Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, (January 14, 2008) – After an extensive international search among top academic research leaders, His Excellency Minister Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Board of Trustees, today announced that Professor Choon Fong Shih will be the Founding President of KAUST, the new world-class, graduate-level scientific research university now under development in Saudi Arabia. He is expected to assume his duties on 1 December 2008.

The NSF is preparing to handle the review of preliminary proposals submitted in response to the Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) solicitation.

Members of the International Mechanics Community

Dear Mechanics Colleagues,

As was reported in the Final Announcement of the forthcoming International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics to be held in Adelaide, Australia next August, two major prizes in mechanics will be awarded for the first time at the Congress. These are the G. K. Batchelor Prize in Fluid Mechanics, sponsored by Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and the Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics, sponsored by Elsevier Ltd. and its journals in solid mechanics. Both prizes have been created in order to recognize major contributions by individuals to their respective branches of mechanics over the past 10 years. The purpose of this letter is to announce the decisions of the selection committees for these prizes.

Michael Ortiz, of the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories, of the California Institute of Technology, has won the Rodney Hill Prize.  The newly established Prize is sponsored by Elsevier Limited, awarded under the auspices of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM).  The award of US$25,000 will be presented at the 22nd International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, taking place in Adelaide in August 2008.

Howard Stone, of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has won the first Batchelor Prize.  The newly established Prize is sponsored by Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.  The award of US$25,000 will be presented at the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM), taking place in Adelaide in August 2008.  Howard is iMechanica user number 96.

At the 2007 ASME Congress, in Seattle, Professor Wing Kam Liu won the 2007 Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award.  Wing Kam was a past chair of the Applied Mechanics Division, and has made seminal contributions in the field of computational mechanics.

Applied Mechanics Division Banquet, Sheraton Hotel, Seattle, Washington, November 13th, 2007.

I would like to begin by thanking the members of the Timoshenko Medal Committee, consisting of the five members of the Applied Mechanics Division Executive Committee, Ravi-Chandar, Dan Inman, Zhigang Suo, Tayfun Tezduyar, and Ares Rosakis, the five previous chairs of the Executive Committee, Tom Farris, Wing Kam Liu, Mary Boyce, Pol Spanos, and Stelios Kyriakides, and the five previous Timoshenko Medalists, Ken Johnson, Grisha Barenblatt, Mort Gurtin, Ben Freund, and John Hutchinson. As a former member of the Executive Committee, I completed my ten-year tenure on the Timoshenko Committee the year before last, and now I will have the opportunity to return for another five years. Actually, I am looking forward to it. I enjoyed my time on the Executive and Medal Committees, and the opportunity to work with outstanding mechanicians, such as Carl Herakovich, Stan Berger, Lallit Anand, Alan Needleman, the late Dusan Krajcinovic, and many others. I also want to thank everyone in attendance here tonight.

This award is a great honor. Frankly, I am thrilled to receive it, but I am also humbled by it. The previous recipients represent a who’s who of twentieth century engineering science. It is quite an incredible club to join. I promise to do my best to live up to the standard as I continue my scientific work.

On June 17-20, 2008 the Inaugural Conference of the American Academy of Mechanics will be hosted in New Orleans, Louisiana. Following this conference this event will be hosted in the USA every four years to coincide with the ICTAM conference. This meeting will help the mechanics communities with applications in solids, fluids, bio, etc. to interact and set new challenging concepts and refinements in the existing areas of Mechanics.

This conference will be on all topics addressing mechanics of fluids, solids, biomechanics, macro-, micro- and nano-mechanics, etc. This addresses both Characterization and Assessment of Systems and will cover a broad spectrum of topics in solid and structural mechanics, materials, and fluid mechanics.

The governor of Virginia has asked President Bush to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to  Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who died trying to save his students during the mass killings at Virginia Tech.  Read more.

You may want to know about a petition to ask George Bush to grant Liviu Librescu the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Please consider signing it, and tell others about it.

via Ken P. Chong, National Science Foundation