D. J. DeMichele Award

This award, established in 1990 in honor of Dominick J. DeMichele (1916-2000), recognizes an individual who has demonstrated “exemplary service and support of promoting the science and educational aspects of modal analysis technology.” This award is presented annually at the International Modal Analysis Conference.

Dominick J. DeMichele was the past director of the International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC), having directed 13 annual IMACs, and was founder and president of Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Services. He held a B.S.M.E. from Rensselaer and was also a graduate of the New York Diesel Institute. He joined the mechanical engineering department of the general engineering laboratory at the General Electric Company, Schenectady, NY, in 1940 as a project engineer and retired from GE in 1979. He received the coveted Charles E. Coffin Award, the company’s highest award to its employees, for his contribution in the field of solid mechanics (vibration, shock, stress-strain and acoustics). While at GE, Mr. DeMichele was awarded four patents: High Temperature Strain Gages; Strain Gages; Method for Making Resistance Strain Gages; and Strain Gage Pressure Transducer.

Mr. DeMichele was a 42-year member and a Fellow of SEM. He was chair of two national meetings, a member of the Executive Board, a member of the Technical Papers Committee, chair of the national technical session on high temperature strain gages, and organizer and first chairman of the New York-Hudson Local Section of the Society. He was a senior member of the Instrument Society of America and of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing. He served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Instrumentation Committee for the American Association of Highway Officials Road Test. Mr. DeMichele was appointed a member of the National Commission on Technical Education of the National Science Foundation. He published numerous technical papers and in-house reports covering the development of high-temperature strain gages, special projects in strain gage applications, vibration, acoustics and other measurement programs.

Award Guidelines      Award Nomination Form

In recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of nonlinear modal analysis and its global dissemination across academia and industry.

Gaëtan Kerschen
Gaëtan Kerschen is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Liège, Belgium. He received his PhD degree from the same university in 2003 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the National Technical University of Athens in 2004 and 2005. His research interests center on nonlinear modal analysis, nonlinear system identification, smart structures and vibration mitigation. He is the co-founder of NOLISYS, a startup company which provides solutions and software for nonlinear vibrating systems. In 2017, he was the first recipient of the SEM/Sage Publishing Young Engineers Award.