Pradeep Sharma's blog

It is my pleasure to announce the launch of the "Eshelby-UH Mechanics Award for Young Faculty". This award will be given annually to rapidly emerging junior faculty who exemplify the creative use and development of mechanics. The intent of the award is to promote the field of mechanics, especially among young researchers. While interdisciplinary work that bridges mechanics with physics, chemistry, biology and other disciplines is encouraged, the ideal awardee will demonstrate clear inspiration from mechanics in his/her research.

The attached paper was recently accepted for publication in Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.

The Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Houston has an opening for a non-tenure track instructional faculty position.  The ideal candidate should be passionate about teaching will be expected to teach 3 undergraduate courses a semester and help with ABET. A competitive 9-month salary is expected and summer support is possible as well. Although the position is non-tenure track, our intention would be to hire someone for the long-haul.

Two post-doctoral fellow positions are available in Sharma's research group at University of Houston. Potential candidates can visit the following website to get an idea of the kind of research projects undertaken in this group: http://www2.egr.uh.edu/~psharma/index.html. The positions are for one year but renewable for a second year upon satisfactory performance. Candidates are expected to be familiar with both atomistic calculation methods and continuum mechanics.

For both mechanicians and physicists, linking continuum concepts to the underlying microscopic characteristics of materials has remained a major preoccupation. Certainly, with the recent advent of the so-called "multiscale" modeling approaches, this topic has been brought to a sharp focus. Cauchy stress is one such continuum concept that has courted a fair amount of controversy.

The Cullen College of Engineering of the University of Houston invites nominations and applications for the position of Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME). As part of a major drive for excellence, the college seeks innovative and enthusiastic leadership to build upon the strengths of the research and educational programs of the ME Department. The successful candidate must possess academic skills and credentials of the highest caliber, with an established national and international reputation in research, and academic and professional leadership in Mechanical Engineering or related fields. Credentials appropriate to the rank of Professor are required.

I plan to submit the attached paper on quantum mechanical definition of stress in the next few weeks. Comments and feedback are welcome. Fair amount of work has been done on stress definition in the context of classical molecular dynamics (also attracting some controversies). In contrast, there appear to be several open issues in the quantum case. Hopefully, the attached paper provides a starting point.