J. W. Dally Young Investigator

James W. Dally, P.E., Ph.D., has been internationally recognized for seminal contributions to the development of experimental methods for studying dynamic fracture mechanics and stress wave propagation problems; for academic leadership; and for developing innovative teaching materials and textbooks for undergraduate and graduate education.

Since his retirement from active teaching and research at the University of Maryland, College Park, Jim serves as an engineering consultant for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and manages College House Enterprises, LLC (Knoxville, TN), a niche publisher of engineering textbooks.

Previously, Jim taught at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY); the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; and the U.S. Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs, CO); and he served as dean of engineering at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston. He also held positions at the Mesta Machine Co. (Homestead, PA); IIT Research Institute, Chicago; and IBM (Manassas, VA).

An ASME Fellow, Jim is also a Fellow and Past President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) and the American Academy of Mechanics, and a member of American Society for Engineering Education and the National Defense Industrial Association.

Among his distinguished honors, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1984); was selected by his peers to receive the Senior Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award in the College of Engineering (1991) and the Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award (1993) at the University of Maryland. He was a member of the University of Maryland team that received the Outstanding Educator Award sponsored by the Boeing Co. (1996), and more recently, he received an Outstanding Alumni Award (2009) from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s mechanical engineering department, the 2012 Daniel C. Drucker Medal from ASME and the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award from the Mechanics Division of ASEE in 2013.

Jim earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1951 and 1953, respectively. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1958.

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For extraordinary contributions to advancing the research on structural monitoring and dynamic testing with interdisciplinary methodologies.

Zhu Mao
Zhu Mao is currently an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and before that, he worked at the University of Massachusetts Lowell from 2015 to 2021. He received his B.S. from Tsinghua University and M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego. He has published over 100 journal and conference papers and was the Past Chair of the MVUQ Technical Division at SEM. He is currently on the IMAC Advisory Board and serving as the technical editor of Experimental Techniques. He is the recipient of 2011 D. J. DeMichele Scholarship Award and the 2019 SAGE Publishing Young Engineer Lecture Award from SEM. He is also the recipient of 2018 AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award.