M. HETÉNYI Award

This award was established in 1967 for the best research paper published in Experimental Mechanics. It was named in honor of Dr. Miklos Hetényi. A brief biography and an abridged list of Dr. Hetényi's professional accomplishments follow:

Education: University of Technical Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 1924-30; Diploma in Civil Engineering, 1931; Graduate work with H.M. Westerguard, Univ. of Illinois, 1934-35 and with S.P. Timoshenko, Univ. of Michigan, 1935-36; PhD in Eng. Mechanics, 1936.

Publications: Author of over 70 scientific papers on analytical and experimental mechanics and on the theory of structures; Beams on Elastic Foundations, Univ. of Michigan, 1946; Coeditor of Proc. of the Tenth International Congress on Applied Mechanics, Springer Ed., 1969.

Contributions to SEM: 1 of 4 founders, 1943; Vice President, 1943-44; 2nd President, 1944-45; Editor, Handbook of Experimental Stress Analysis, 1950.

General Contributions: Development and Application of Three-Dimensional Photoelasticity; Development of a "Reduction Method" for the Analysis of Continuous Frames; Development of a "Method of Initial Parameters" for the Analysis of beams, beam-grillages, and beams in elastic foundations; Solution for Axi-Symmetrical Deformation of Spherical Shells and Related Structures.

Award Guidelines

Past Recipients are:

2010 M. Hetényi Award:  Ashok Kumar Pandey, Rudra Pratap, and Fook Siong Chau

“Effect of Pressure on Fluid Damping in MEMS Torsional Resonators with Flow Ranging from Continuum to Molecular Regime”
Experimental Mechanics, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 91-106, 2008

Dr. Ashok Kumar Pandey received his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Bhilai Institute of Technology, Durg, India in 2001 and the M.S. and PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 2003 and 2007, respectively. He was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore from November 2007 to April 2008. Currently, he is with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel as a Lady Davis and RBNI Postdoctoral fellow since May 2008. His research interests are mainly in the design and characterization of micro and nanoresonators.

Dr. Rudra Pratap, a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, heads the CranesSci MEMS Lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. CranesSci MEMS Lab is the first research lab in MEMS and Nanotechnology in India established with grant from a private company. Dr Rudra Pratap specializes in MEMS and NEMS design. He is currently involved in several MEMS device developments that include MEMS microphones, ultrasound transducers and inertial systems. His research group has carried out extensive studies of energy dissipation in dynamic MEMS devices and developed comprehensive models of damping in such devices. He is keenly interested in MEMS based energy harvesting technologies. Apart from MEMS and NEMS, his research interests include nonlinear dynamics, molecular motors, and computational mechanics.

Dr. Pratap holds a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University, USA, a Masters degree from the University of Arizona, USA, and a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Prior to joining IISc in 1996, he taught at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, for two and a half years. He was also an ‘Invited Professor’ at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland during 2004-2005. He has been at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, since 1996. He is currently involved in setting up a reasonably large nanofabrication facility at IISc. Dr. Pratap has published over 80 papers in journals and conference proceedings and has two books to his credit. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Shock and Vibration.

Dr. Fook Siong Chau is an Associate Pro-fessor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore. He is Head of the Applied Mechanics Academic Group and concurrently, Deputy Head of Department with responsibility for administrative matters. Dr. Chau graduated with BSc(Eng.) and PhD from the Univer-sity of Nottingham, United Kingdom. His current research interest is the design, development and characterisation of new and innovative micro- components and systems, particularly optics-based devices such as mirrors, scanners, liquid lenses and sensors. He also has interest in the application of optical techniques for nondestructive evaluation and metrology. Dr Chau is a member of the Institution of Engineers, Australia and the Institution of Engineers, Singapore.