John E. Dolbow's blog

by Oscar Lopez-Pamies, John E. Dolbow, Gilles A. Francfort, and Chris J. Larsen

Abstract

As some of you may know, I recently announced that I would be stepping down as the Editor-In-Chief (EIC) for the Elsevier journal titled Finite Elements in Analysis and Design (FINEL).  I had served in that capacity since 2010, so roughly 14 years, and the team at Elsevier indicated that it was time for someone new to take over the role.  Although I would have been more than happy to stay on, in time I did appreciate that it was probably better for the community to pass the reins on to someone else. 

Happy to announce that along with Oscar Lopez-Pamies from UIUC, I will be hosting a webinar this Friday 11/4 at noon Eastern time.  The webinar will discuss undergraduate research opportunities in STEM.  It will be held over Zoom but also live-streamed via Facebook.

Interested students or faculty can register here:

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jGIHjz9RR8ycX4JiErO3nA

Nominations for the 2021 USACM Honors and Awards are now being accepted.  For information on guidelines and submitting nominations, go to this web page:

http://forms.usacm.org/2021_HA_Call

The deadline for submission is January 31, 2021.  As a past President of the USACM, I'd like to encourage members of the iMechanica community to consider suitable awardees and nominate individuals as appropriate.  

The USACM is happy to announce a virtual seminar this week by Professor Kai James on Thursday, July 16th at 2pm Eastern.  The title of the seminar is "Topology Optimization of Self-Actuating Shape-Memory Polymer Mechanisms".  An abstract of the talk is available here:

https://unsacm.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/James_2020.07.16_1pm.pdf

We have a number of seats available to anyone interested.  We just ask attendees to register at this page:

The USACM is happy to announce a virtual seminar this week on Thursday, July 9th at 3pm Eastern.  The title of the seminar is "Image- and Experiment-based Modeling of the Forgotten Right Side: Right Ventricle, Tricuspid Valve, and Venous Blood Clot".  An abstract of the talk is available here:

https://unsacm.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/Rausch_2020.07.09_2pm.pdf

We have a number of seats available to anyone interested.  We just ask attendees to register at this page:

The USACM is happy to announce a virtual seminar this week on Wednesday, July 1st at 3pm Eastern.  The title of the seminar is "Examining Fracture Behavior in Heterogeneous Poro-Elastic Media from Nano to Macro-Scale".  An abstract of the talk is available here:

https://unsacm.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/Newell_2020.07.01_2pm.pdf

We have a number of seats available to anyone interested.  We just ask attendees to register at this page:

The USACM is happy to announce a virtual seminar this week on Thursday, June 25th at 3pm Eastern.  The title of the seminar is "Data-Driven Turbulence Modeling and Simulation: From RANS to LES".  An abstract of the talk is available here:

https://unsacm.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/Evans_2020.06.25_2pm.pdf

We have a number of seats available to anyone interested.  We just ask attendees to register at this page:

The USACM has established a virtual seminar series that will run for six weeks over the course of this summer.  Exact dates and times will vary each week, but a full listing of the speakers is available here:

https://www.usacm.org/seminar-series

The series features young computational mechanicians from across the US.  The talks are an opportunity for these young scientists to showcase their research activities during a period in which so many conferences and meetings are being cancelled or postponed.  

I have an opening for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University.  The postdoctoral fellow will work with PhD students and experimental collaborators on a range of projects dealing with coupled field phenomena and fracture/damage mechanics.   Projects here involve collaborations with Duke's medical school as well as researchers at other institutions and the national laboratories.  

I have an opening for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University.  The project is a collaboration with experimentalists. and concerns problems in which fractures are driven by fluid flow through porous media.

The ideal candidate will have some background in finite element methods and mechanics, nonlinear coupled field problems, C++, and high-performance computing.  Experience with fracture mechanics is useful but not required.  

The fellowship can begin as soon as this September, 2019, with some flexibility on the start date.  

Professors Wilkins Aquino and John Dolbow at Duke University are soliciting applications for candidates interested in a postdoctoral fellowship in computational mechanics at Duke University.  Applicants are expected to have experience in the development of numerical methods for problems in mechanics.  Experience with nonlinear systems of equations, high-performance computing, C++, and/or meshless methods will be viewed favorably.  

Dear Colleagues,

  I thought some of you may be interested in our recent paper which has been accepted to Soft Matter.  The article is available online, here:

  http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2014/SM/C7SM01245D?page=search

   It contains a new model for the fracture of particulate rafts, and some new experimental results as well.  Questions are welcome. 

As many of you know, the scientific community lost William (Bill) Klug to a senseless act of violence on June 1, 2016.  A memorial to Bill has been penned by his graduate advisor, Michael Ortiz.  It has been posted at the following website:

http://www.usacm.org/memoriam

The page includes information for those interested in making donations in support of the family.  

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University invite applicants for a tenure-track faculty position in one or more of the areas of: (1) optimization, design, control, and decision making under uncertainty; (2) coupled-field problems in geo-mechanics with application to energy production, energy storage, hazardous waste storage/disposal, and environmental protection; (3) new or emerging materials with application to renewable energy; and (4) computational science and engineering with impact on societally-relevant problems and the

The Annual Robert J. Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis was held last Friday, April 24, on the campus of Duke University.  

The winner of the 2015 Melosh Medal is Maurizio Chiaramonte, from Stanford University, for his paper “The H-Version of the Method of Auxiliary Mapping for Higher Order Solutions of Crack Problems.”   

Maurizio was selected as the winner on the basis of both his written paper and his oral presentation.  The other finalists at the 2015 competition were:

The US Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) is calling for nominations for the Gallagher Young Investigator Medal.  The description from the USACM Awards page reads:

Phani Motamarri, from the University of Michigan, is the 2014 Melosh Medalist for his paper "A Spectral Finite-Element Based Method For Large-Scale Quantum Mechanical Calculations Using Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory".  Please join me in congratulating Phani!

Seven finalists have been identified for the 2014 Melosh Competition to be held Friday, April 25, at Duke University.  The finalists and their current institutions are:

Amin Aghaei, Carnegie Mellon University

Sourish Chakravarty, SUNY Buffalo

Gina El Jannoun, MINES ParisTech

Mhadi Moghadam, UCSD

Phani Motamarri, University of Michigan

Nathan Roberts, University of Texas

Timothy Truster, University of Tennessee

Please join me in congratulating the finalists!!! 

The 25th Melosh Competition  for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on April 25, 2014.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of mechanics.

As a journal editor, I am often surprised by some of the suggestions authors make for potential reviewers.  In some cases the suggestions are not very good, and on occasion authors do not suggest reviewers at all.  Some authors will even state explicitly that they cannot think of any reviewers, which is really surprising.   

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 

Allen LaBryer, University of Oklahoma 

Ernesto Lima, University of Texas at Austin 

Ju Liu, University of Texas at Austin

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.