Ju Liu, from the University of Texas at Austin, is the 2013 Melosh Medalist for his paper "A Thermodynamically Consistent Algorithm for Liquid-Vapor Phase Transitions in Complex Geometries".  Please join me in congratulating Ju!

Six finalists have been announced for the Twenty-Fourth Annual Robert J. Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis. The finalists and their current institutions are:

Michael Borden, University of Texas at Austin

Pritam Chakraborty, Idaho National Laboratory 

Due to a large number of requests, the deadline to submit an abstract to the 12th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics, to be held in Raleigh this summer, has been extended to March 15, 2013. Students and postdoctoral fellows should note that there are travel awards  available for the Congress.

The deadline to submit an abstract to the 12th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics , to be held in Raleigh this summer, has been extended to February 28, 2013.  Those interested in participating in the Congress should submit their abstracts as soon as possible as we do not plan to extend the deadline again.  Students and postdoctoral fellows should note that there are travel awards  available for the Congress.

I look forward to seeing many of you in Raleigh this summer!

John Dolbow

Congress Co-Chair 

The 24th Melosh Competition  for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on April 26, 2013.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of mechanics.

The deadline for minisymposium proposals for the 12th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM12) has been extended to September 30, 2012.  

The Congress will be held July 22-25, 2013 in Raleigh, NC and proposals are solicited from people interested in organizing sessions in their area of expertise or interest and/or wishing to honor a particular individual for their sustained contributions or a special honorary birthday celebration.  

I thought it might be useful to the iMechanica community to write something about the review process in scientific journals.  For full disclosure, I am one of the co-editors of the Elsevier journal Finite Elements in Analysis and Design.  Indeed, it is precisely that editorship which informs the content of this blog post.  

Minisymposium proposals for the 12th U.S. National Congress  (USNCCM12)

to be held July 22-25, 2013 in Raleigh, NC are solicited from people

interested in organizing sessions in their area of expertise or interest

and/or wishing to honor particular individual for their sustained

contributions or a special honorary birthday celebration.

The proposal should contain the minisymposium title, a one-page

description of the objectives of your minisymposium as well as the

Daniel Hurtado, from the California Institute of Technology, is the 2011 Melosh Medalist for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis.  Daniel won for his paper titled "Multiscale Modeling of Microcrystalline Materials".  He presented the paper on Friday, April 29, 2011, on the campus of Duke University.  

Please join me in congratulating Daniel!

Six finalists have been announced for the Twenty-Third Annual Robert J. Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis. The finalists and their current institutions are:

Bircan Avci, Leibniz University

Andrea Hawkins-Daarud, University of Texas at Austin

Daniel Hurtado, California Institute of Technology

This is the second call for abstracts for the 23nd Annual Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis.  The deadline for the abstracts has been extended to January 14, 2011.   Details of the competition and submission procedure can be found here. 

The 23nd Annual Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on April 29, 2011.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of mechanics. 

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in the area of materials, structures, and geosystems. The search is open to all candidates regardless of rank.  We are particularly interested in scholars with excellent research and teaching experience who will complement one or more of the department's ongoing initiatives in computational mechanics, geomechanical modeling and characterization, or dynamics and control.Additional information about the faculty and research initiatives in these areas is provided at http://www.cee.duke.edu/civil/materials-structures-geosystems.

A postdoctoral fellowship is available in the Duke Computational Mechanics Laboratory, beginning in September of 2010 (with flexibility on timing).  Funding for the fellowship concerns research in the simulation of dynamic fracture of polycarbonate.  The ideal candidate will have experience in some combination of the following areas (in no particular order of importance):

Phanish Suryanarayana, from the California Institute of Technology, is the 2010 Melosh Medalist for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis.  Phanish won for his paper titled "Non-periodic Finite-Element and Mesh-Free Formulation of Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory".  He presented the paper on Friday, April 30, 2010, on the campus of Duke University.  

Please join me in congratulating Phanish!  

Seven finalists and three honorable mentions have been announced for the Twenty-Second Annual Robert J. Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis. The seven finalists and their current institutions are:

Marcial Gonzalez, Caltech

Ming-Chen Hsu, University of California San Diego

Alejandro Ortiz, University of California Davis

Jay Oswald, Northwestern University

Rashmi Raghu, Stanford University

Phanish Suryanarayana, Caltech

Kris van der Zee, University of Texas at Austin

The three honorable mentions and their institutions are:

Pritam Chakraborty, Ohio State University

This is the second call for abstracts for the 22nd Annual Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis.  Extended abstracts are due by January 8, 2010.   Details of the competition and submission procedure can be found here. 

The 22nd Annual Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on April 30, 2010.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of mechanics. 

Attention all iMechanicians!  If you have a theme you would like to see in the Journal Club next year, please feel free to:

1. post it here for discussion
2. send it to me via email
3. reccommend discussion leaders

Thanks in advance!

This has been a topic that the editors of Journal Club have been discussing for some time now.  We would like some feedback from the entire iMechanica community.

iMechanica's Journal Club was originally proposed by Pradeep Sharma to be an online analog to a standard "Journal Club" that many research groups hold.  The basic idea is simple enough: a set of articles are identified by the group, everyone reads them, and then there's a discussion. In theory, there are many advantages to mimicking this process online and specifically at iMechanica.  These include experts leading the discussion, the discussion being saved online so that anyone can see it, and the use of different types of media.

A postdoctoral fellowship is available in the Duke Computational Mechanics Laboratory, beginning in September of 2009 (with flexibility on timing).  Funding for the fellowship concerns research in the simulation of large-scale fragmentation phenomena.  The ideal candidate will have experience in some combination of the following areas:

Researchers at Duke University are seeking applications for NRC research associates, to work with Professors David Stepp and John Dolbow.  The NRC program is unique in the sense that applicants have the opportunity to perform research on a program they design.  The positions are well-paid fellowships and are nominally for two years, extendable to a third.  

We are seeking applicants who are generally interested in examining the intrinsic relationships between the structure of polymeric and biological materials and their mechanical and/or optical properties, as influenced by composition, processing, environment, and applied stimulus.  Researchers with a strong computational or experimental background are particularly encouraged to apply.  

Last fall, Elsevier launched SciTopics. It is a web site devoted to providing research summaries of current topics by experts, allowing for public interaction through comments.  Anyone can become a member and post comments, or request to author a page. 

The deadline for abstracts for the 21st Annual Melosh Competition has been extended until January 30.  All interested graduate students are encouraged to apply.

 This competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on Friday, April 24, 2009.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of computational mechanics.