SEM Bios
Below are the profiles of many SEM members, board members, speakers, instructors and award recipients. If you would like your profile included, please email us your headshot (jpg/png/tif) and short bio (75-100 words). Updates to existing bios can be sent to the same email address.
Doug Adams
Vanderbilt University
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, D.J. DeMichele
Dr. Doug Adams is the Daniel F. Flowers Professor of Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He has pioneered the development of nonlinear system identification approaches in experimental structural dynamics to realize state estimation and health monitoring technology for application in the energy, defense, and manufacturing sectors. He has advised 59 graduate students, written 270 papers, and received 10 patents. He authored a textbook on structural health monitoring as well as 5 book chapters including one on nonlinear experimental dynamics for the upcoming SEM Experimental Structural Dynamics Handbook. He has organized sessions and delivered talks at the International Modal Analysis Conference for 27 years.
Last Updated: 11/23/2020
James Akers
National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s John H. Glenn Research Center
SEM Awards: D.J. DeMichele
A senior aerospace engineer in the Structural Dynamics Branch at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's John H. Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH. His focus is the analysis and testing of aerospace vehicles and hardware in the areas of modal testing and analysis, vibration testing, shock testing, acoustic testing, and signal processing. He supports the NASA Engineering Safety Center. Most recently he has applied Operational Modal Analysis techniques to the NASA Artemis I Dynamic Rollout test data to identify its rollout modal characteristics.
Last Updated: 12/05/2023
Damiano Alizzio
University of Messina
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Graduated in “Mechanical Engineering” at University of Catania, he is currently involving PhD course in “Engineering and Chemistry of Materials and Construction” at University of Messina. His main research activities concern realization of innovative strategies for Mechanical and Thermal Measurements, Non-Destructive Tests and Machines Design, especially in automated tests implementation and numerical tests simulation. Main applications of his research are focused on dedicated systems for energy recovery from renewable sources, design and performances investigation on trabecular structures and mechanical characterization of smart materials for Endodontics.
Last Updated: 05/12/2021
Matt Allen
Brigham Young University
SEM Awards: B. J. Lazan, D. J. DeMichele
Dr. Matt Allen is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Brigham Young University. Prior to that he taught for 15 years in the department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from BYU, M. S. and PhD degrees from the Georgia Tech in 2005 and was a post-doc at Sandia National Laboratories. He enjoys playing sheep’s head (Bavarian card game) during breaks at IMAC, trying new kinds of ice cream and skiing, hiking, biking or almost anything to do with mountains.
Last Updated: 09/04/2024
Palle Andersen
Structural Vibrations Solutions A/S
Dr. Andersen is a Civil Engineer with specializations in computational methods for structural dynamics. He got his M.Sc. in 1993 from Department of Civil Engineering at Aalborg University, and his Ph.D. in 1997. Since 1999 he has been the managing director and co-founder of Structural Vibration Solutions A/S. He is the senior developer of the ARTeMIS software for Operational Modal Analysis. For more than 20 years, he has been giving lectures and courses on Operational Modal Analysis and the use of ARTeMIS software worldwide. He is the author and co- author of more than 100 papers and articles on Operational Modal Analysis and Damage Detection, and the co-inventor of the Frequency Domain Decomposition patent. Today one of the most used techniques for Operational Modal Analysis.
Last Updated: 08/28/2024
Bonnie Antoun
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Bonnie Antoun is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, currently leading the Experimental Mechanics team in the Mechanics of Materials Department in Livermore, CA. Dr. Antoun joined Sandia in 1998 after completing her Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Antoun’s research projects range from fundamental research and experimental discovery, to characterization of various structural and complex engineering materials, to developing the highest quality validation data sets for thermomechanical behavior of engineering systems in extreme environments. Dr. Antoun is an expert in fatigue, time-dependent behavior and elevated temperature experimentation for conventional, high-performance and additively manufactured materials. Dr. Antoun is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the journal Experimental Techniques.
Last Updated: 01/16/2025
Peter Avitabile
University of Massachusetts Lowell
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, D. J. DeMichele, SEM Past President (2016-17)
Dr. Peter Avitabile is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (1985-pres). He has over 4 decades of experience in design and analysis using FEM and experimental techniques. His focus is structural dynamics specializing in the areas of modeling, testing and correlation of analytical and experimental models along with advanced applications for developing linear and nonlinear structural dynamic models. Pete has written papers for every IMAC Conference since IMAC I as well as organized many sessions over the years. Numerous journal papers (50+) have also been published with his research assistants who are critical to moving the research agenda forward. He has published a book on “Modal Testing: A Practitioners Guide” as well as 17 years of “Modal Space” articles for Experimental Techniques. He is also Co-Editor of the Handbook of Experimental Structural Dynamics along with two handbook chapters contributed.
Last Updated: 01/04/2022
Javad Baqersad
Kettering University
SEM Awards: D. L. Brown, SAGE Publishing Young Engineer Lecture, D. J. DeMichele Scholarship
Dr. Javad Baqersad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of the Noise, Vibration, and Experimental Mechanics Laboratory at Kettering University. His research expertise spans vibration and acoustics, digital twins, optical techniques, and structural health monitoring. He has published more than 100 journal articles and conference papers contributing to the literature in these areas. Dr. Baqersad currently serves as an editor for Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing and is an international advisory board member for Experimental Techniques. He was also the founding chair of the Computer Vision and Laser Vibrometry Technical Division at IMAC. His outstanding contributions have been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the DeMichele Scholarship and SAGE Young Engineer Award from SEM, the Outstanding New Researcher and Outstanding Researcher Awards from Kettering University, and the Colwell Merit and Teetor Awards from SAE International.
Last Updated: 01/27/2025
Carter Barkley
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T)
SEM Awards: G. L. Cloud Scholarship
Carter Barkley is currently a M.S. student in Mechanical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T) where he also received his B.S. in 2019. Carter has been involved with the Composites and Polymers Engineering (CAPE) lab at SDSM&T where he assisted with the manufacturing of continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic prepreg production machines. In addition to projects at the CAPE lab, Carter’s masters research investigates the response of thermoplastic matrix composite joints to various loading conditions. The research project also aims to compare experimental techniques such as digital image correlation (DIC) with numerical models.
Last Updated: 09/24/2020
Janice M. Barton
University of Bristol, Bristol Composites Institute, UK
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, William M. Murray Lecture
Janice Barton is a full professor in Experimental Mechanics. In 2019, she joined the University of Bristol, bringing a wealth of previous experience from the University of Southampton. Her research interests are in imaging for data-rich material characterizations and assessments of structural performance, with a special focus on the lightweight structural design of composite structures. Janice has been involved in numerous projects across disciplines.
Janice attended her first SEM conference in 1993 and is 25 year member of the Society. She is an SEM fellow and she gave the 2020 Murrey Lecture (the first woman), which was truly an honour. She chaired the inaugural TD on Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging. She has recently led a successful £20M proposal for an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Centre for Doctoral Training in Innovation for Sustainable Composites Engineering to train 67 doctoral students over an eight year period. Janice puts knowledge sharing and student development at the centre of her activities.
Janice attended her first SEM conference in 1993 and is 25 year member of the Society. She is an SEM fellow and she gave the 2020 Murrey Lecture (the first woman), which was truly an honour. She chaired the inaugural TD on Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging. She has recently led a successful £20M proposal for an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Centre for Doctoral Training in Innovation for Sustainable Composites Engineering to train 67 doctoral students over an eight year period. Janice puts knowledge sharing and student development at the centre of her activities.
Last Updated: 05/13/2024
Zdeněk Bažant
Northwestern University
SEM Awards: W. M. Murray Lecture
Born and educated in Prague (Ph.D. 1963), Bažant joined Northwestern in 1969, where he has been W.P. Murphy Professor since 1990 and simultaneously McCormick Institute Professor since 2002, and Director of Center for Concrete and Geomaterials (1981-87). He was inducted to NAS, NAE, Am. Acad. of Arts & Sci., Royal Soc. London, the national academies of Austria, Japan, Italy, Spain, Canada, Czech Rep., Greece, India, Lombardy and Turin, and Academia Europaea. Honorary Member of: ASCE, ASME, ACI, RILEM. Received Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art I. Class from Pres. of Austria; 7 honorary doctorates (Prague, Karlsruhe, Colorado, Milan, Lyon, Vienna, Ohio State); ASME Medal, ASME Timoshenko, Nadai and Warner Medals; ASCE von Kármán, Freudenthal, Newmark, Biot, Mindlin, TY Lin and Croes Medals, SES Prager Medal; Guggenheim Fellow; Outstanding Res. Award from Am. Soc. for Composites; RILEM L’Hermite Medal; Exner Medal (Austria); Torroja Medal (Madrid); etc. He authored nine books, on Scaling of Struct. Strength, Creep in Concrete Str., Inelastic Analysis, Fracture and Size Effect, Stability of Structures, Concrete at High Temp., Creep & Hygrothermal Effects, Probab. Mech. of Quasibrittle Str., and Quasibrittle Fracture Mechanics. H-index: 145, 88,000 cit. (Google). In 2019 Stanford U. weighted citation survey (see PLoS), he was ranked no.1 in CE and no.2 in Engrg. worldwide. In 2015, ASCE established ZP Bažant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention.
Last Updated: 11/02/2023
Christopher Bean
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Christopher Bean is currently a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms of metallic materials. He has been working on the evaluation of advanced mechanical properties by the rapid analysis of large datasets of nanometer-scale plastic localization events through utilizing computational techniques, specifically computer vision and other machine learning methods. He received his bachelor’s degree in Physics and Secondary Education from Valparaiso University in 2019.
Last Updated: 05/15/2024
Allison Beese
Penn State University
SEM Awards: Springer/Nature Publishing Young Investigator Lecture
Allison Beese is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State University. She serves as Director of Penn State's Additive Manufacturing and Design graduate program, Associate Head for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Materials Science and Engineering, and co-director of Penn State’s additive manufacturing center (CIMP-3D). Her multiscale mechanics of materials research group uses experimental and computational methods to identify the links between microstructural features and deformation and failure of materials, with a focus on additively manufactured metallic materials. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State and M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Last Updated: 11/06/2023
Sarah Bentil
Iowa State University
SEM Awards: Springer/Nature Publishing Young Investigator Lecture
Sarah A. Bentil is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University. Prof. Bentil received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University and M.S. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, both degrees in Mechanical Engineering. She has two B.S. degrees from the University of Vermont, one in Mechanical Engineering and the other in Mathematics. Prof. Bentil’s research interest is in the field of soft material mechanics. Her work includes application of experimental mechanics to (i) investigate traumatic brain injury mechanisms due to blast wave exposure and (ii) characterize the dynamic behavior of polymers in extreme environments.
Last Updated: 11/10/2022
Ryan Berke
Utah State University
SEM Awards: Springer/Nature Publishing Young Investigator Lecture
Ryan B. Berke is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Utah State University. He received his BS from the University of Maryland and his PhD from The Ohio State University, both in Mechanical Engineering. He has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Aerospace En-gineering at the University of Illinois and as a summer faculty fellow at the Air Force Research Lab. His research interest is experimental mechanics at extreme temperatures, with applications geared to-wards the energy, aerospace, and nuclear industries. He is especially interested in the role that envi-ronment plays on heterogeneous failure mechanisms which include ductility, creep, and fatigue; and in pushing the boundaries of Digital Image Correlation to more extreme temperature, time, and length scales.
Last Updated: 11/10/2022
Rephayah Black
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Rephayah Black is a PhD candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Between his undergraduate and graduate education, Rephayah worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Chemical Diagnostics and Engineering Group. His current research interests lie in the deformation behavior of structural metallic materials with regard to microstructure.
Last Updated: 05/14/2024
Jason Blough
Michigan Technological University
SEM Awards: D. J. DeMichele
Dr. Blough received his BSME and MSME from Michigan Technological University. Dr. Blough attended the University of Cincinnati to obtain his Ph.D. in structural dynamics. Dr. Blough’s Ph.D. was on rotating machinery signal processing methods. Dr. Blough is currently a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Department at Michigan Technological University. Dr. Blough has been active in SEM and IMAC for over 20 years publishing papers, serving on the SEM Executive Board, and continues to be an instructor in the “Young Engineers” program at IMAC. Dr. Blough’s research is industry funded, with support from the auto and powersports industries, and defense. Dr. Blough has graduated over 40 graduate students and published over 135 papers. Dr. Blough has taught over 40 short courses to industry on various NVH topics.
Last Updated: 11/23/2020
Marco Bonfanti
D.I.E.E.I. – University of Catania
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Graduated in “Mechanical Engineering” and PhD in “Structural Mechanics”, he is currently engaged in research activity at the D.I.E.E.I. (Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering) of the University of Catania. His main research activities concern “Mechanical and Thermal Measurements”, applied to the study of Polymers/Elastomers and Endodontic Instruments and aimed to the mechanical characterization. He provides didactic support in “Mechanical and Thermal Measurements”, “Non-Destructive Tests” and “Machines Design”.
Last Updated: 05/12/2021
Rick Bono
The Modal Shop
Richard W. Bono is President of The Modal Shop in Cincinnati, OH, subsidiary of PCB Piezotronics, an MTS Systems Corporation. Bono holds a BSME degree from the University of Cincinnati and has studied graduate level courses with the University of Cincinnati’s Structural Dynamics Research Laboratory. Additionally, he has several years’ experience as a test engineer at a prominent noise and vibration consulting firm including experimental modal analysis, sound intensity measurement, nearfield acoustic holography and transducer calibration techniques. Since 1994, Bono has been with The Modal Shop, holding various positions with engineering, sales and marketing responsibilities.
Last Updated: 10/22/2020
Nicola Bonora
University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Nicola Bonora is a professor of Machine Design at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio. Previously, he worked at Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus (OH), and successively at Wayne State University, Detroit (MI). In 2004 he received the NRC Research Associateship Senior Research Awards to conduct research at Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate (RW), Eglin AFB, FL. His research interests focus on damage and fracture of materials under varying strain rates and temperature conditions. In 2011, he co-founded Techdyn Engineering, a spin-off company. He has also directed several technology transfer projects working closely with SMEs and large companies.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Anders Brandt
Aarhus University, Denmark
Anders Brandt is currently professor and Head of the Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering at Aarhus University in Denmark. He received a MSc degree in electrical engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, in 1986, and a Licentiate of Engineering degree in medical electronics from the same university in 1989 with a thesis on bone conduction hearing. For the next 20 years he worked with support, education and consultancy in industry in Sweden and abroad, in the areas of applied signal analysis. In 1996 he co-founded Axiom EduTech, a company dedicated to serve industry and academia with his expertise in advanced signal analysis methods for vibration analysis. During this time, he gave over 250 short-courses on various topics such as frequency analysis, modal analysis, order tracking, and vibration testing. He was also teaching at universities on similar topics.
In 2009, professor Brandt left the company and joined University of Southern Denmark (SDU) as an associate professor, building up a research group focusing on research within operational modal analysis and structural health monitoring. He has supervised and co-supervised 11 PhD students and 31 master students to completion and was promoted to full professor in 2019. He has published over 100 cited papers in the fields of vibration analysis and structural health monitoring. He left SDU to become Head of Department at Aarhus University in 2021.
Professor Brandt is the author of Noise and Vibration Analysis: Signal Analysis and Experimental Procedures, 2nd edition, published by John Wiley and Sons, 2023. In addition, he also published the free ABRAVIBE toolbox for MATLAB and GNU Octave, and maintains the site www.abravibe.com from which the toolbox and other educational material may be downloaded. The toolbox is used throughout universities and industry worldwide and has over 5,000 registered users. He also has a YouTube channel which contains lectures for many of the chapters of his book.
In 2009, professor Brandt left the company and joined University of Southern Denmark (SDU) as an associate professor, building up a research group focusing on research within operational modal analysis and structural health monitoring. He has supervised and co-supervised 11 PhD students and 31 master students to completion and was promoted to full professor in 2019. He has published over 100 cited papers in the fields of vibration analysis and structural health monitoring. He left SDU to become Head of Department at Aarhus University in 2021.
Professor Brandt is the author of Noise and Vibration Analysis: Signal Analysis and Experimental Procedures, 2nd edition, published by John Wiley and Sons, 2023. In addition, he also published the free ABRAVIBE toolbox for MATLAB and GNU Octave, and maintains the site www.abravibe.com from which the toolbox and other educational material may be downloaded. The toolbox is used throughout universities and industry worldwide and has over 5,000 registered users. He also has a YouTube channel which contains lectures for many of the chapters of his book.
Last Updated: 06/24/2024
Florent Bridier
Naval Group, Nantes (France)
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Florent Bridier received his M.S.Ing. degree in Aeronautics in 2002 at Ecole Nationale Superieure of Space and Aeronautics in Toulouse (France), and his PhD in Material and Mechanical Science in 2006 at University of Poitiers (France). After a year as postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Florent worked for 6 years as a researcher at the Mechanical Engineering department of Ecole de Technologie Superieure in Montreal (Canada) specializing in experimental characterization of microscale plastic behavior of aeronautical alloys. Since 2013, Florent joined Naval Group in Nantes (France) as a Research Engineer. His main current research activities concern fatigue behavior of naval structures and numerical simulation of welding.
Last Updated: 04/07/2020
Ralph D. Brillhart
ATA Engineering, Inc.
SEM Awards: D. J. DeMichele
Ralph D. Brillhart is Vice President, Test, at ATA Engineering, Inc., and has been involved in structural dynamics and modal testing for over forty years. He was a principal in the formation of ATA as a spin-off from Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) in 2000. He has become recognized worldwide for his modal testing and analysis expertise and has written numerous papers discussing the application of modal testing techniques and new approaches to modal testing. He helped grow the ATA test business, promoting custom software and new methods development including multi-shaker burst random, Multi-Sine, and modal-handle excitation techniques, modal parameter estimation methods, and automated test techniques utilizing TEDS sensor technology. He is currently working with NASA Engineering Safety Center (NESC) assisting in review of SLS testing activities.
Ralph received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1977 and his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Dynamics and Controls, from the University of California, Davis, in 1983. He has been a long-time participant at IMAC and served SEM as an Executive Board member from 2010 to 2012; since 2013 he has served on the SEM Advisory Board, where he is currently a member of the Exhibitor Planning Committee.
Ralph received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1977 and his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Dynamics and Controls, from the University of California, Davis, in 1983. He has been a long-time participant at IMAC and served SEM as an Executive Board member from 2010 to 2012; since 2013 he has served on the SEM Advisory Board, where he is currently a member of the Exhibitor Planning Committee.
Last Updated: 11/23/2020
Neal Brodnik
University of California, Santa Barbara
Neal Brodnik is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to that, he got his PhD at Caltech in Materials Science, focusing on full-field material mechanics. His current work uses machine learning methods for materials microstructure generation and augmentation of experimental mechanics pipelines.
Last Updated: 04/02/2025
Filipe Zanini Broetto
Federal University of Santa Catarina–UFSC
SEM Awards: G. L. Cloud Scholarship
Filipe is a mechanical engineer and researcher with a bachelor's from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2015) and a Master of Applied Sciences from the University of British Columbia (2018). He works in the Metrology and Automation Lab at his home university, focusing on residual stress analysis using hole drilling, ring-core, and slitting methods combined with the ESPI technique. Currently a PhD candidate, his research aims to develop a slitting technique variant to assess non-uniform stress fields and evaluate the residual stress homogeneity in components treated by laser shock peening.
Last Updated: 05/27/2025
Eric N. Brown
Los Alamos National Laboratory
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, J. W. Dally Young Investigator, A. J. Durelli, SEM Past President (2021-22)
Dr. Eric N. Brown is the Division Leader for the Explosive Science and Shock Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he oversees the premier research program on energetic materials and dynamic material response in support of National Security. His research has spanned fracture and damage of complex heterogeneous polymers and polymer composites for energetic, reactive, and structural applications including crystalline phase transitions, plasticity, dynamic loading conditions, and self-healing materials. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials and been named Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics. He has received awards for his technical achievements in solid mechanics and materials science from the ASC, DOE-NNSA, LANL, MRS, SEM, TMS and the University of Illinois. He has served on several committees in SEM including Board of Directors as Member-at-Large, Research Committee, Technical Activities Council, Biological Systems and Materials Technical Division, and SEMEF. He has organized and chaired sessions for the Dynamic Behavior of Materials, Composites, and Biological Systems, and Materials Technical Divisions. He served three terms as an Associate Technical Editor of Experimental Mechanics. Eric was a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Technical Staff Member in the Materials Science and Technology Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Technical Advisor for the Joint DoD/DOE Munitions Technology Program in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, and managed the Neutron Science and Technology Group in the Los Alamos National Laboratory Physics Division. Eric received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1998 and a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in 2003, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Last Updated: 12/28/2021
Hugh Bruck
University of Maryland
SEM Awards: C. E. Taylor
Prof. Bruck is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical of Engineering at the University of Maryland, where he also serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. He was a pioneer of Digital Image Correlation with over 250 publications characterizing and modeling the thermomechanical behavior of bulk metallic glasses, functionally graded materials, nanostructured materials, biological/bio-inspired composites, and multifunctional structures for robotics. He is a SEM Fellow, and has served as an at-large member of the executive board, Fellows Committee Chair, Research Committee Chair, National Meetings Council member, associate editor for Experimental Mechanics, and founded the Biological Systems and Materials TD.
Last Updated: 11/08/2023
Selda Buyukozturk
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Dr. Selda Buyukozturk is Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory where her current research focuses on systems analysis and algorithm development for applications in national security. She completed her B.S. in materials science and engineering from MIT (2015), where she served on the Society of Undergraduate Materials Scientists Executive Board, and was awarded the Fung Fellowship for Global Education in Italy and Spain. At Brown University, she was a Hibbitt Fellow, and earned her M.S. (2018) and Ph.D. (2022) degrees in materials science with a concentration in solid mechanics. Her dissertation focused on the development of optical systems for viscoelastic material characterization under high strain-rate deformations, for future use within biomedical applications.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Daniel Casem
US Army Research Laboratory
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson, G. A. Brewer
Daniel Casem received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1993. After a brief time doing manufacturing support and structural analysis at General Dynamics Electric Boat Division he returned to the University of Maryland and obtained both M.S. (1998) and Ph.D. (2000) degrees in mechanical engineering. In 2001 he started at the US Army Research Laboratory as a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow for one year and has been there as a federal employee ever since. His research focusses on high rate experimental solid mechanics and shock.
Last Updated: 05/21/2024
Vijaya Chalivendra
UMass Dartmouth
SEM Awards: M. M. Frocht
Vijay Chalivendra completed his Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics at the University of Rhode Island in 2003 and served as a Postdoctoral researcher at Caltech during 2003-2005. He is currently serving as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMass Dartmouth. He served as Chairs of Dynamic Behavior of Materials (2010-2012) and Composite, Hybrid and Multifunctional Materials (2020-2022) TDs. Over his career, he has received numerous honors including, ASME Fellow (2020), Technical Editor for Experimental Mechanics (2013-present), University Research Recognition Award (2021), University Outstanding Undergraduate Faculty Research Mentor Award (2023), College of Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (2024).
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Ioannis Chasiotis
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: JSA Young Investigator Lecture, A. J. Durelli, SEM Fellow, M. Hetényi, Biological Systems and Materials Technical Division–Best Paper, F. G. Tatnall
Ioannis Chasiotis is a Caterpillar Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology, and his Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. His research focuses on the mechanics of materials and interfaces at small length scales. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Society of Engineering Science Young Investigator Medal, the ASME Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator award, and the Society for Experimental Mechanics A.J. Durelli award. From 2016 to 2020 he served as the editor-in-chief of Experimental Mechanics. He is a fellow of the SEM and the ASME.
Last Updated: 03/15/2021
Weinong (Wayne) Chen
Iowa State University
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, B. J. Lazan
Wayne Chen, SEM Fellow, is Vance and Arlene Coffman Department Chair and Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University. He received PhD from Caltech in Aeronautics and was faculty members at University of Arizona and Purdue University. His research group has been developing innovative dynamic experimental methods and characterizing the high-rate material responses under challenging conditions. He has been an SEM member for over three decades, served as a founding member of the editorial board of JDBM, is a long-time Associate Editor of EM and a member of the International Advisor Board of ET.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Tyler Chu
University of Rhode Island
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Tyler Chu is a mechanical engineering PhD student studying dynamic loading of inflatable structures under Dr. Arun Shukla at the University of Rhode Island. He obtained his master's at the same lab studying the effects of long-term deep-sea immersion on composites. He studied for his bachelor's at Washington State University in materials science and engineering. Tyler is extremely interested in shock and high-impact loading of structures and intends to continue exploring these fields in his professional career. In his downtime, Tyler dabbles in martial arts and archery.
Last Updated: 03/20/2023
Angel N. Chukwu
Starbucks Mobile App Development
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Angel Chukwu is currently a User Experience Researcher for mobile app development at Starbucks. In 2018, she received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at East Carolina University. In 2020, she received a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where her thesis focused on the biomechanics of traumatic brain injury and microscopy methods for tracking high-speed deformations of soft materials. She’s previously conducted research in additive manufacturing at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, in product design for the National Science Foundation, and in web design for tech-focused non-profits. Her current research focuses on influencing engineering and design decisions through user-centricity, as well as understanding user behavior through psychology, economics, globalization, and digital ethics.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Gary Cloud
Michigan State University
SEM Awards: C. E. Taylor, SEM Past President (1993-94)
University Distinguished Professor Gary L. Cloud joined the faculty of Michigan State University in 1961 and now conducts research in the MSU Composite Vehicle Research Center, of which he was Founding Director. He is a licensed Professional Engineer and Chartered Physicist as well as a Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics and the Institute of Physics. His research brings together optical and electronic techniques to solve problems in geomechanics, biomechanics, composites, fracture mechanics, fastening, nondestructive evaluation, and design. He has written extensively, including the book Optical Methods of Engineering Measurement, and he holds 5 patents.
Last Updated: 11/08/2023
Scott Cogan
University of Franche-Comté, FEMTO-ST Institute
SEM Awards: D. J. DeMichele
Scott Cogan has been a research fellow with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) since 1991 and is currently director of the Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification group at the Department of Applied Mechanics of University of Franche-Comté, FEMTO-ST Institute. His research interests focus on experimental model validation and robust decision-making under lack of knowledge. He has co-advised 32 PhDs and lead over 40 research projects with industrial partners including PSA, Renault, EDF, SAFRAN, ARIANE GROUP, ALSTOM, CNES, and the Paris Philharmonique. He has coauthored 40 articles in pier-reviewed journals and over 200 technical articles and reports. Scott also develops dedicated MATLAB-based software tools for use in an industrial environment with commercial simulation codes.
Scott received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1984 and 1985. He went on to obtain his PhD in 1990 from the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, France under the direction of Professor Gérard Lallement. Scott is a long-time participant at IMAC and served on the advisory board from 2014 to 2017.
Scott received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1984 and 1985. He went on to obtain his PhD in 1990 from the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, France under the direction of Professor Gérard Lallement. Scott is a long-time participant at IMAC and served on the advisory board from 2014 to 2017.
Last Updated: 11/23/2020
John M. Considine
United States Department of Agriculture
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer
John M. Considine received his B.S. and M.S. in Engineering Mechanics and Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He began his research career at the USDA, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory in 1985 in the pulp and paper research group. Prof. Robert Rowlands (UW-Madison Retired) and Prof. Jeffrey Suhling (Auburn University) set him on the experimental mechanics career path; FPL scientists Vance Setterholm and Dennis Gunderson encouraged his mechanics exploration. Recent collaboration with Prof. Fabrice Pierron (University of Southampton) has opened additional investigation in paper and wood physics. John enjoys developing unique instruments to explore unique cellulose material behavior of paperboard, currency and stamp paper.
Last Updated: 11/24/2020
Wendy Crone
Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
SEM Awards: C. E. Taylor, SEM Past President (1993-94)
Wendy C. Crone is the Karen Thompson Medhi Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She also holds the title of Discovery Fellow with the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Her research is in experimental solid mechanics, and many of the topics she has investigated are connected with nanotechnology and biotechnology. She has applied her technical expertise to improving fundamental understanding of mechanical response of materials, enhancing material behavior through surface modification and nanostructuring, exploring the interplay between cells and the mechanics of their surroundings, and developing new material applications and medical devices. Dr. Crone has published 80 journal publications, dozens of explanatory education products, four patents, and two books: Introduction to Engineering Research and Survive and Thrive: A Guide for Untenured Faculty. Prof. Crone has garnered numerous awards for research, teaching and mentoring, including the Award for Mentoring Undergraduates in Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities from UW–Madison and the M.M. Frocht Award from SEM. She has been a member of the Society for Experimental Mechanics since 1988, Fellow since 2015, and has served in several roles including President. She has also served in numerous leadership roles including Interim Dean and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at UW-Madison and Program Director at the National Science Foundation.
Last Updated: 02/12/2024
Samantha Daly
University of California at Santa Barbara
SEM Awards: J. W. Dally Young Investigator, M. Hetényi, Michael Sutton International Student Paper, JSA Young Investigator Lecture
Samantha (Sam) Daly is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCSB. She received her Ph.D. from Caltech in 2007 and subsequently joined the University of Michigan, where she was on the faculty until 2016 prior to her move to UCSB. Her research interests lie at the intersection of the experimental mechanics of materials and data science. Currently, the Daly group is engaged in the development of new methods for multi-scale material characterization and application of machine learning to understand the deformation and failure of advanced structural materials. Prof. Daly is a Fellow of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division and as Vice Chair of the U.S. National Committee of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.
Last Updated: 12/19/2024
James P. De Clerck
Michigan Technological University
SEM Awards: C. E. Taylor, SEM Past President (1993-94)
Dr. James De Clerck is a Professor of Practice in the Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics Department at Michigan Technological University. He earned BS, MS and PhD degrees from Michigan Tech, receiving his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics in 1991.
Prior to joining the Michigan Tech faculty in 2009, Jim was a Project Design Engineer at the General Motors Noise and Vibration Center where he worked on improving vehicle noise and vibration performance at every stage of the vehicle development process. Jim led the development and implementation of new vibration analysis and testing technology. He also developed techniques for establishing design performance requirements and for validating analytical model predictions.
In addition to advising the Michigan Tech Formula SAE Team, Jim teaches classes on Model Based Design, Dynamics, System Dynamics Senior Capstone Design, Analytical and Experimental Modal Analysis, Machine Design, and Analytical Vibro-Acoustics classes. Jim’s areas of expertise include noise and vibration, structural dynamics, design, modal analysis, model validation, inverse methods applied to design, and advanced measurement techniques.
Prior to joining the Michigan Tech faculty in 2009, Jim was a Project Design Engineer at the General Motors Noise and Vibration Center where he worked on improving vehicle noise and vibration performance at every stage of the vehicle development process. Jim led the development and implementation of new vibration analysis and testing technology. He also developed techniques for establishing design performance requirements and for validating analytical model predictions.
In addition to advising the Michigan Tech Formula SAE Team, Jim teaches classes on Model Based Design, Dynamics, System Dynamics Senior Capstone Design, Analytical and Experimental Modal Analysis, Machine Design, and Analytical Vibro-Acoustics classes. Jim’s areas of expertise include noise and vibration, structural dynamics, design, modal analysis, model validation, inverse methods applied to design, and advanced measurement techniques.
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Rosa De Finis
University of Salento - Department of Engineering for Innovation (Lecce-Italy)
Rosa De Finis is an Assistant Professor (Senior Researcher) at the Department of Engineering for Innovation of the University of Salento (Italy). She holds a PhD in Mechanical and Management Engineering, a MS in Mechanical Engineering and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic of Bari (Italy). Her PhD research focused on the fatigue and fracture mechanics behaviour of materials, with assessments via energy-based methods. Rosa undertook a six-month internship at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (Sao José dos Campos, Brazil) and four months at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology-NTNU in Trondheim (Norway), working on additive manufactured Ti-based alloys using thermography and digital image correlation techniques.
Rosa is involved in different research projects investigating energy-based methods for rapid fatigue behaviour assessment as well as innovative non-destructive evaluations (NDE) via thermoelastic stress analysis.
She has served as Co-Chair and is currently Chair for the Technical Division 'Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging'. Rosa first attended SEM Annual Congress in 2016.
Rosa is involved in different research projects investigating energy-based methods for rapid fatigue behaviour assessment as well as innovative non-destructive evaluations (NDE) via thermoelastic stress analysis.
She has served as Co-Chair and is currently Chair for the Technical Division 'Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging'. Rosa first attended SEM Annual Congress in 2016.
Last Updated: 03/10/2025
Frank DelRio
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer
Dr. Frank W. DelRio is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories and an Affiliate Scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (since 2020). Prior to joining Sandia and CINT, he was a Project Leader and Group Leader in the Nanomechanical Properties Group and Fatigue and Fracture Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (2007-2020) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California Berkeley (2006-2007). He received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder in 2006, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boise State University in 2002, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1998. He is a practicing experimentalist in nanomechanics and nanotribology, with a focus on the development and use of new methods in atomic force microscopy and instrumented indentation for small-scale mechanical testing in extreme environments. In SEM, he is a Technical Editor for Experimental Mechanics and past Chair of the MEMS and Nanotechnology Technical Division, and has been a co-organizer for the International Symposium on Micro- and Nanomechanics for six years.
Last Updated: 11/10/2022
Adrian DeWald
Hill Engineering
SEM Awards: F. Zandman
Dr. Adrian DeWald is the President of Hill Engineering; a global leader in improving the performance of materials – delivering expertise in residual stress measurement, mechanical design, material testing, structural integrity, and service life extension. Adrian is a technical expert in residual stress measurement and simulation of residual stress effects on material performance. His research and publication record covers the contour method, laser shock peening, weld residual stress, and related topics. Adrian is professionally active within the SEM (Associate Technical Editor for Experimental Mechanics and former Chair of the Residual Stress Technical Division) and ASTM.
Last Updated: 01/07/2025
Dario Di Maio
University of Twente
I have graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University Politecnica delle Marche (IT). I obtained a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London. After that, I worked as Post-Doc in the Rolls-Royce Composites technology centre in the Aerospace department of the University of Bristol. After that, I was appointed Assistant Professor of Dynamics in the Mechanical Engineering department of the University of Bristol. I currently work as an Assistant Professor of Structural Dynamics at the University of Twente.
I am an experimental dynamicist who is an expert in modal testing, laser vibrometry, composite vibration fatigue, nonlinear modal testing and vibration testing. I also used my skills to transfer technology from academia to industry up to a technology readiness level 6 by developing measurement methods, control panels for vibration measurements and testing methods. I was awarded a patent for discovering a damage initiation criterion in composites vibration fatigue.
I taught Nonlinear Structural Dynamics at the University of Bristol. I currently teach Mechanical Vibrations, Structural Dynamics and Advanced Dynamics at the University of Twente.
I am an experimental dynamicist who is an expert in modal testing, laser vibrometry, composite vibration fatigue, nonlinear modal testing and vibration testing. I also used my skills to transfer technology from academia to industry up to a technology readiness level 6 by developing measurement methods, control panels for vibration measurements and testing methods. I was awarded a patent for discovering a damage initiation criterion in composites vibration fatigue.
I taught Nonlinear Structural Dynamics at the University of Bristol. I currently teach Mechanical Vibrations, Structural Dynamics and Advanced Dynamics at the University of Twente.
Last Updated: 08/01/2022
Brandon Dilworth
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Brandon Dilworth is currently an Assistant Group Leader in the Mechanical Engineering Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Brandon holds a BS (2004) in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Acoustics from Kettering University and MS (2006) and Ph.D. (2009) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. Brandon started as a Technical Staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 2009, working as a design and structural dynamics test engineer supporting several optical-mechanical prototype programs. As both staff and a Group Leader, Brandon has helped to advance the Laboratory’s capabilities in structural dynamic testing and analysis.
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Jacob Dodson
Air Force Research Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base
Jacob Dodson is senior research mechanical engineer and research team lead at the Munitions Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. He has been at AFRL since starting in 2012. Jacob Dodson earned B.S degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics (2007) from Virginia Commonwealth University, a M.S. in Mathematics (2010) and a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering (2012) from Virginia Tech. He leads a research team which focuses on structural dynamics of electronics packages in high-rate extreme environments. Dr. Dodson’s research interests include shock survivable sensors, high-rate dynamics, structural health monitoring, prognostics and real-time decision making. He was the awarded the SEM 2018 Sage Publishing Young Engineer Lecture award for early-career contributions to experimental mechanics. He is a member of the advisory committee for several technical groups including the Shock and Vibration Symposium and is a registered Professional Engineer.
Last Updated: 12/21/2021
Sivareddy Dondeti
Auburn University
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Sivareddy Dondeti is currently a mechanical engineering PhD student and a Woltosz Fellowship recipient at Auburn University, Alabama. Previously, he has worked as a stress analyst at General Electric, United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Aerospace Systems, and Bombardier Aerospace. He received his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology - Madras and JNTU - Hyderabad, India, respectively. His current research interests include dynamic fracture mechanics of brittle materials and experimental mechanics with an emphasis on vision-based techniques such as DIC and DGS. His works have appeared in peer reviewed journals such as Experimental Mechanics, International Journal of Solids and Structures, Additive Manufacturing.
Last Updated: 04/21/2021
Anna Lena Eberle
ZEISS - Oberkochen, Germany
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Anna Lena Eberle has a Diploma degree in Biology from the University of Tübingen and holds a doctoral degree in neurosciences, obtained at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics. Multi-modal microscopy measurements were a key element of her work as a researcher on quantitative investigations of the brain’s vasculature. Since 2012, she joined ZEISS as Product Manager for the ZEISS MultiSEM. She and her colleagues are working on developing the application space of this first commercial multi-beam SEM to a broader spectrum beyond its current main application in neuroscientific research.
Last Updated: 05/15/2024
McLean Echlin
UC Santa Barbara
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
McLean Echlin is a research scientist in the Materials Department at UC Santa Barbara. His graduate work focused on the use of statistical approaches for modeling fracture toughness at the University of Michigan. His understanding of ultrashort pulse laser-materials interactions has led to the development of tomography techniques, such as the TriBeam microscope, for the acquisition of large multimodal 3-D datasets critical for understanding failure mechanisms in structural materials, such as superalloys, and for improving performance in thermoelectric materials. He also has interest in the merging of data modalities including the measurement of strain and microstructure for structure-property relations.
Last Updated: 04/07/2020
Veronica Eliasson
Colorado School of Mines
SEM Awards: F. Zandman, Springer/Nature Publishing Young Investigator Lecture
Veronica Eliasson is an associate professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Eliasson obtained an MS degree in Vehicle Engineering and a PhD in Mechanics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, under Prof. Apazidis. Dr. Eliasson then spent two years as postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology working with Profs. Rosakis and Dimotakis. In 2009, Dr. Eliasson joined the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Southern California as an assistant professor. In 2016, Dr. Eliasson joined the Structural Engineering Department at University of California, San Diego. Dr. Eliasson is the 2020 recipient of the F. Zandman Award through the Society of Experimental Mechanics.
Dr. Eliasson’s research interests are multi-disciplinary and range from shock wave dynamics to fracture mechanics — all explored relying on a strong foundation of experimental mechanics coupled with different types of ultra high-speed photography techniques. Dr. Eliasson is passionate about promoting research experiences for diverse groups of high school students, undergraduate students and graduate students through participation in laboratory experiments.
Dr. Eliasson’s research interests are multi-disciplinary and range from shock wave dynamics to fracture mechanics — all explored relying on a strong foundation of experimental mechanics coupled with different types of ultra high-speed photography techniques. Dr. Eliasson is passionate about promoting research experiences for diverse groups of high school students, undergraduate students and graduate students through participation in laboratory experiments.
Last Updated: 11/10/2022
Igor Emri
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
SEM Awards: B. J. Lazan, S. Nemat-Nasser
Igor Emri is a Chair Professor of Mechanics at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana and President of the Institute for Sustainable Innovative Technologies, EEIG. He has developed an innovative theoretical-experimental approach, known as Knauss-Emri model, to study the non-linear behavior of time-dependent materials. His current research activities are focused on non-linear time-dependent behavior of dissipative systems with the emphasis on behavior of solid polymers and their nano-, micro-, and macro-composites and granular systems. He is one of the founders and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal »Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials«, published by Springer. He is a fellow grade member of the Society of Experimental Mechanics (USA), Russian Academy of Engineering, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, European Academy of Sciences, Slovenian Academy of Engineering, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and Honorary Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Engineering. He is the Chairman of the Science Europe Scientific Advisory Committee, and a past president of the Society of Experimental Mechanics and the International Committee on Rhelogy (ICR).
Last Updated: 03/04/2020
David Epp
Sandia National Laboratory
David Epp is currently the Reactor Facility Development manager at Sandia National Laboratory. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Oklahoma in 1997, 2001 and 2002, respectively with a focus on dynamics and controls. David joined Sandia in 2002 and has held a variety of positions as a staff member, including a test engineer, experimental facility owner, principle investigator, and project leader. David’s Sandia career started with modal and structural dynamic testing and includes applications such as MEMS, satellites, and other Sandia missions. David was promoted to manager of the Structural Dynamics and Radiography/NDE department in 2012 and has since held several management positions including a two year rotation in Washington DC.
Last Updated: 10/21/2020
Alper Erturk
Georgia Institute of Technology
SEM Awards: J. W. Dally Young Investigator
Dr. Alper Erturk is the Woodruff Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His theoretical and experimental research interests are at the intersection of smart structures and dynamical systems. He is a recipient of various awards including the ASME C.D. Mote Jr. Early Career Award for “demonstrated research excellence in the field of vibration and acoustics,” ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award for “notable contributions to the field of adaptive structures and material systems,” and an NSF CAREER Award. Dr. Erturk received his PhD in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2009. He is a Fellow of ASME.
Last Updated: 12/02/2020
Horacio D. Espinosa
Northwestern University
SEM Awards: P. S. Theocaris, S. Nemat-Nasser, SEM Fellow, W. M. Murray Lecture, M. Hetényi, B. J. Lazan
Professor Espinosa received his PhD in Solid Mechanics in 1992 from Brown University. He started his academic career as Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where he was promoted to Associated Professor with tenure in 1998. Since 2000, he has been in the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, has held the James and Nancy Farley Professorship since 2009, has served as Director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics program since 2007, and Director of the Institute for Cellular Engineering Technologies. Espinosa, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors, has made significant contributions in the areas of deformation and failure of materials, from mesoscale dynamic failure of ceramics and composites to the mechanisms responsible for the hardness and toughness of biomaterials to size scale effects in elasticity and plasticity of thin films and low dimensional materials.
Last Updated: 03/20/2025
Charles Farrar
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer
Charles “Chuck” Farrar is a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Fellow and the leader of LANL’s Engineering Institute. In 1988 he earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of New Mexico. His research interests have focused on developing integrated hardware and software solutions to structural health monitoring problems. Working jointly with engineering faculty at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) since 2003, he has developed the LANL/UCSD Engineering Institute with a research focus on integrating advanced predictive modeling capabilities with novel sensing systems and information technology to solve challenging multi-disciplinary engineering problems related to LANL’s national security mission.
Last Updated: 11/24/2024
Samuel Fayad
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Samuel S. Fayad earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his research focused on inverse techniques for model calibration using digital image correlation (DIC). During this time, he advanced DIC methods while interning with the Diagnostics for Extreme Environments and Hypersonics group at Sandia National Laboratories under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Jones and Dr. Phil Reu. He was the first to publish on a previously unrecognized bias term in DIC and is co-author of a patent for path-integrated DIC. Dr. Fayad currently works in the aerospace industry, calibrating and validating progressive damage failure models for predictive analysis of aircraft structural capability.
Last Updated: 05/31/2025
Xue Feng
Tsinghua University
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Xue Feng is a tenured professor at Tsinghua University. He has made substantial contributions to the fundamental principle and experimental characterization of mechanics behavior for extremely high-temperature environment, and for the film-substrate system with extreme heterogeneity. He has published more than 280 papers in journals including Nat. Mater., JMPS, etc., and is an inventor of over 200 patents. He was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Engineering Sciences (SES Fellow), a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME Fellow), a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, etc., and won ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Division Award, ASME Melville Medal, etc.
Last Updated: 03/28/2025
Garrison Flynn
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Garrison Stevens Flynn completed her Ph.D. at Clemson in 2016 as a U.S. Department of Education GAANN fellow studying propagation of model uncertainties and systematic bias in multi-scale and multi-physics models. She is currently an R&D Engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory on the Data Analysis Team of the Test Engineering group. Her research interests focus on statistical methods for inverse analysis of complex systems, with applications including nuclear nonproliferation and arms control and treaty verification. Garrison has been an active member of SEM since 2013. She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification Technical Division. In addition to her research, Garrison is passionate about mentorship. She has served as a mentor to a Girls in STEM program, providing mentorship to seven girls as they progress from 6-12th grade. She was a founding member of an early career development initiative promoting career discovery and collaboration across weapons engineering at LANL. Garrison received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Clemson University in Civil Engineering with an emphasis in structural engineering.
Last Updated: 06/12/2024
Gary Foss
Boeing Company (retired)
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer
Gary Foss retired in 2016 from the Boeing Company as a test engineer and Technical Fellow for experimental modal analysis and ground vibration testing. Over a thirty-five-year career at Boeing he performed modal tests for programs across all Boeing divisions, and contract modal tests across the industry. As an SEM member, he attended 23 IMAC conferences between 1991 and 2016, where he authored or co-authored eighteen technical papers on experimental techniques. He served on the SEM Executive Board, and as SEM Sensors & Instrumentation Technical Division Chairman from 2007-2016. With his passion for K-12 STEM education, he serves as vice president of the Washington State Science & Engineering Fair and organizes the judging of SEM and AIAA awards for pre-college students at the annual Intel International Science & Engineering Fair.
Last Updated: 02/19/2025
Susan Foss
Deere and Company (retired)
SEM Awards: F. G. Tatnall, G. A. Brewer, SEM Fellow
Susan K. Foss worked at Deere and Company throughout her career and held numerous service roles in the Society for Experimental Mechanics including serving as the society's first female President of the society from 1998 to 1999. Foss earned her Bachelor and Master Degrees in Mathematics from Michigan State University. In 1967 she attended Michigan Technological University until 1975 when she received a Master Degree and ABD in Engineering Mechanics. Foss worked for Fairbanks-Morse Corporation in Beloit, Wisconsin as part of an advanced research and design team between her time at Michigan State University and Michigan Technological University. She worked for Deere and Company, starting as a project engineer in 1975 in Waterloo, Iowa. In 1980, she transferred to Moline, where she continued as an engineer for Deere and Company until her retirement in 2006. Foss was a 40 year member of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) serving as the Treasurer from 1991 to 1994 and first female President of the Society from 1998 to 1999. She played a seminal role in the creation and development of Experimental Techniques from its start as a newsletter for the Society for Experimental Stress Analysis (SESA) (later known as SEM) in the mid-1970s to a full magazine in the early 1980s, and ultimately an archival peer reviewed technical journal. Foss was appointed as Experimental Techniques first Technical Editor from 1985 to 1987 and a second term from 2001 to 2003. She was a long serving Associate Technical Editor for the journal and was named Editor Emeritus in 2012. She received the SEM Tatnall Award in 1995, Brewer Award in 1999, and Fellow in 2004. She passed away on January 24, 2013.
Last Updated: 10/26/2022
Chelsea Fox
University of Rhode Island (student)
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Chelsea has just completed her Master’s in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Rhode Island in May 2021 in the Dynamic Photomechanics Laboratory under Dr. Arun Shukla and Dr. Carl-Ernst Rousseau. She will be starting her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Caltech in September 2021. Her research interests are in additively manufactured and soft material testing, specifically under extreme thermo-mechanical loadings.
Last Updated: 12/28/2021
Christian Franck
University of Wisconsin-Madison
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, M. Hetényi
Christian Franck is the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellow and Bjorn Borgen Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His work specializes in cellular biomechanics and new experimental mechanics including unique three-dimensional full-field imaging capabilities based on multiphoton and confocal microscopy and digital volume correlation. Current application areas of these three-dimensional microscopy techniques include understanding the 3D deformation behavior of neurons in the brain during traumatic brain injuries, and the role of non-linear material deformations in soft matter. He also serves as a technical editor for the Journal of Experimental Mechanics.
His work specializes in cellular biomechanics and new experimental mechanics including unique three-dimensional full-field imaging capabilities based on multiphoton and confocal microscopy and digital volume correlation. Current application areas of these three-dimensional microscopy techniques include understanding the 3D deformation behavior of neurons in the brain during traumatic brain injuries, and the role of non-linear material deformations in soft matter. He also serves as a technical editor for the Journal of Experimental Mechanics.
Last Updated: 01/16/2025
Cosme Furlong-Vazquez
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, A. J. Durelli
Cosme Furlong-Vazquez is Professor and Director of the Center for Holographic Studies and Laser micro-mechaTronics (CHSLT) in the Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Worcester MA. He received his B.Eng. from the University of the Americas, Mexico, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from WPI. He was a visiting Post-doctoral investigator in the field of optical metrology at BIAS, Bremen, Germany. His professional interests and involvement include: combination of modeling and simulation with quantitative optical metrology, fiber optic sensors, digital holography, NDT, materials characterization, and optimization of mechanical and microelectromechanical components and systems (MEMS). He has been recipient of such awards as Sigma Xi Researcher Faculty, WPI’s Morgan and Russell M. Searle Distinguish Instructorships, A.J. Durelli Award from SEM, and he is a research affiliate in the Department of Otology and Laryngology at the Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and a Lecturer on Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School. He is a long-term member of SEM and has actively participated in leadership positions and activities within the society, including sessions and conferences organizer, officer of the Optics TD, and one of the founding members of the MEMS and Nanotechnology TD.
Last Updated: 01/21/2024
Umberto Galietti
Polytechnic University of Bari
Umberto Galietti received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Florence, Florence, Italy. He is currently a Full Professor of mechanical design and machine construction SSD ING-IND/14 with the Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy, where he is also the Head of the research activities at the Thermographic Laboratory, Department of Mechanic, Mathematics and Management. He is also the chief coordinator of regional strategic research groups and projects with various companies. His main research topics regard the use of the experimental mechanics’ techniques, such as thermoelastic stress analysis, photoelasticity, and strain gauge, and nondestructive techniques, such as thermography and ultrasounds, for investigating the mechanic behavior of materials, such as fatigue and fracture mechanics. He is also the Board of Director (BOD) Chairman and a Co-Founder of DES S.r.L., Teramo Italy, a spin-off company.
Last Updated: 03/10/2025
Vatsa Gandhi
California Institute of Technology
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Vatsa Gandhi is a current Ph.D. student at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech working on understanding the dynamic behavior of materials from the atomistic to macroscopic spatial scales. He is interested in exploring phenomena ranging from phase transformations and failure mechanisms to dynamic strength of materials undergoing high strain rate deformations using a combination of plate impact experiments and numerical simulations. Prior to starting his Ph.D., Vatsa earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2018, and his Masters of Science from Caltech in 2019.
Last Updated: 03/15/2023
Tomasz Garbowski
ZEISS - Oberkochen, Germany
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Tomasz Garbowski has a Diploma degree in Physics from the University of Düsseldorf. After working in the automotive industry, he joined ZEISS in Oberkochen, Germany in 2012. As Application Specialist for the ZEISS MultiSEM, the world’s fastest scanning electron microscope, he mastered the art of high-throughput imaging with this then new technology, collected millions of images over the time and supported and trained numerous colleagues and customers around the world on the system since then.
Last Updated: 05/15/2024
Emmanuel Gdoutos
Academy of Athens, Greece
SEM Awards: S. Nemat-Nasser
Dr. Emmanuel Gdoutos is full member of the Academy of Athens, the most prestigious academic institute in Greece, member of the European Academy of Sciences (EAS), European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Academia Europaea, American Academy of Mechanics, International Academy of Engineering, Foreign member of the Russian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of ASME, SEM, International Congress on Fracture (ICF), European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS), European Association for Experimental Mechanics (EURASEM), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Doctorate Honoris Causa of the Democritus University of Thrace (Greece), Russian Academy of Sciences, University of Nis (Serbia) He is Honorary member of IGF (Italy), PSTAM (Poland), SSTAM (Serbia), Literary Society “Parnassos” (Greece), author of more than 300 technical papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, 16 books and editor of 35 books. He received many awards from international societies, including SEM (Lazan, Tatnall, Zandman, Theocaris), ICF, ESIS, EAS, EURASEM, the Turin Academy of Sciences and EAS. He served as president of SEM (2013-2014), ESIS (2006-2010) and EURASEM (2004-2007). A special issue of the journal Meccanica was dedicated to his honor: “Experimental Solid Mechanics: In Honour of Professor Emmanuel Gdoutos” Vol. 50 (2), pp. 253-590 (2015). Among his books are: “Matrix Theory of Photoelasticity” (with P.S. Theocaris), Springer, 1979, “Fracture Mechanics”, 3rd ed. (accompanied with Solutions Manual), Springer, 2020, used as textbook for fracture mechanics courses worldwide, and “Experimental Mechanics”, Springer 2022. He is chair of the Theocaris Foundation which supports the SEM Theocaris award.
Last Updated: 04/25/2023
Mladen Gibanica
First CAE Engineer, Volvo Car Group, Gothenburg, Sweden
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr. Mladen Gibanica is a First CAE Engineer at the Driving Dynamics and NVH department within Volvo Car Group. He recently finished his PhD in uncertainty propagation of synthesised components at Chalmers University of Technology and Volvo Car Group in Gothenburg, Sweden. His research interests include uncertainty quantification, system identification and dynamic substructuring.
Last Updated: 04/14/2020
Martha Grady
University of Kentucky
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition, J. W. Dally Young Investigator
Dr. Martha E. Grady (Meg) is an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY, USA. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Central Florida, Masters and PhD degrees in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania as a Postdoctoral Fellow before beginning her faculty appointment in 2016. She is a past chair of the Biological Systems and Materials technical division and current chair of the Education Committee for the Society for Experimental Mechanics. She was awarded the UCF MAE Alumni Young Engineer Award in 2015, the NSF CAREER Award in 2021, and the UK College of Engineering Excellence in Research Award in 2022. Her research is supported by NSF, NIH, and NASA. Her research interests lie at the intersection of materials, deformation mechanics, and medical interfaces.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Michel Grédiac
Clermont-Auvergne University, Clermont-Ferrand, France
SEM Awards: B.J. Lazan, M. Hetényi, SEM Fellow
Michel Grédiac is a professor at the Clermont-Auvergne University, Clermont-Ferrand, France. He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers in 1983. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1989 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne and the Claude Bernard University, Lyon, under the direction of Prof. Alain Vautrin.
During the first part of his career, he mainly proposed and developed the Virtual Fields Method, which extracts constitutive parameters from full-field measurements and statically indeterminate tests. He co-authored a book on this technique. He then contributed to developing the Localized Spectrum Analysis, which retrieves displacement and strain fields from images of periodic patterns. He mainly uses this technique to characterize the mechanical response of various types of materials.
Michel Grédiac served as an Associate Editor of Experimental Mechanics from 2010 to 2022.
During the first part of his career, he mainly proposed and developed the Virtual Fields Method, which extracts constitutive parameters from full-field measurements and statically indeterminate tests. He co-authored a book on this technique. He then contributed to developing the Localized Spectrum Analysis, which retrieves displacement and strain fields from images of periodic patterns. He mainly uses this technique to characterize the mechanical response of various types of materials.
Michel Grédiac served as an Associate Editor of Experimental Mechanics from 2010 to 2022.
Last Updated: 06/09/2025
Abhishek Gupta
University of Wisconsin-Madison
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Abhishek Gupta is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is focused on the development of novel structured materials with tailored mechanical properties for hypersensitive sensors, biomedical devices, and protective applications in extreme conditions. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in 2019. For his undergraduate thesis, he worked on the design of nonlinear acoustic metamaterials with tunable bandgaps.
Last Updated: 09/05/2023
Vijendra Gupta
University of South Carolina
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Vijendra Gupta is pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics at the Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics department at Columbia University, and his research is focused on the dynamic behavior of graded cellular materials through a combination of experimental, numerical and analytical approaches. Before beginning his Ph.D. program, he gained professional experience in research and development in the industry. He obtained his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Mumbai University, India, in 2008 and a master's in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, in 2010.
Last Updated: 03/15/2023
Suhasini Gururaja
Aerospace Engineering, Auburn University
Suhasini Gururaja is an Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering at Auburn University, AL, USA. She has a joint appointment at the Division of Mechanical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Before joining Auburn University, Suhasini was a faculty in Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Suhasini heads the Advanced Materials and Processing Laboratory (AMPL) research group that works on intertwined research activities in damage development and progression, experimental mechanics, process modelling, and advanced composites manufacturing. Before joining academia, Suhasini worked at GE Global Research (Bangalore, India) and Boeing Commercial Airlines (Everett, WA, USA).
Suhasini first attended SEM in 2022 as her lab at Auburn University has been focusing on establishing process-property-performance correlations of large format additively manufactured lightweight composites for structural applications.
Suhasini first attended SEM in 2022 as her lab at Auburn University has been focusing on establishing process-property-performance correlations of large format additively manufactured lightweight composites for structural applications.
Last Updated: 03/10/2025
Julie Harvie
Lilium, Germany
Julie Harvie is working to make electric aircraft a reality in her current role at Lilium in Germany. At Lilium, Julie’s role as a Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) engineer involves combining test and analysis data to provide design recommendations that optimize the vibratory and acoustic characteristics of the aircraft. Prior to this chapter, she spent three years at VIBES.technology in the Netherlands as a project engineer and manager, using dynamic substructuring to help automotive customers solve noise and vibration problems. She also worked at Sandia National Laboratories for five years as an environments engineer, developing shock and vibration qualification tests for aerospace systems and constructing the BARC challenge problem that is highly popular at IMAC. She earned B.S. (2012) and M.S. (2013) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts - Lowell, where she worked as a research assistant to Dr. Peter Avitabile in the Structural Dynamics and Acoustics Laboratory.
Last Updated: 01/02/2024
Jeffrey Helm
Lafayette College
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper, F. G. Tatnall
Jeffrey D. Helm received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of South Carolina in 1999 and was one of the founding members of Correlated Solutions Inc. He is currently an associate professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Lafayette College. Dr. Helm served as chair of the Education Committee, is a member of SEMEF, was the editor-in-chief of Experimental Techniques and continues on as an associate editor for the journal. Dr. Helm’s interests include the application and development of the digital image correlation method. His current work centers on civil applications including pile/soil movement and assessing the bioremediation of sandy soils.
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Nathaniel Helminiak
United States Military Academy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Nathaniel Helminiak earned his doctorate from Marquette University and is an Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy. His West Point Ballistics Laboratory investigates high strain rate phenomenon including interior, exterior, and terminal ballistics. Current collaborations seek to improve modern Army systems, with the DEVCOM Armaments Center, and the AMBITION (Additive Manufacturing and Ballistics Innovation for Technological Impact, Optimization, and Novelty) project, with DEVCOM ARL. Nathaniel's design, construction, and experimentation with variable strain rate material testers, including gas gun platforms, are used to characterize novel material equations of state and material strength properties for advanced system design.
Last Updated: 05/27/2025
François Hild
Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie (ENS Paris-Saclay)
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi, B. J. Lazan, SEM Fellow
François Hild is a research professor at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie (ENS Paris-Saclay). He graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay in 1989, received his PhD in Mechanics of Materials from the Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris 6) University in 1992, and from the University of California at Santa-Barbara in 1995. His research focuses on the identification and validation of constitutive models with full-field measurements at different scales and various modalities. He was awarded the CNRS 2017 silver medal for all his work. He serves as Associate Editor for the Experimental Mechanics journal since 2008.
Last Updated: 10/28/2020
Michael Hill
University of California, Davis
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer
Professor Michael R. Hill is on the faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of California, Davis. He joined UC Davis in 1996 after having completed a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University (advised by Drew Nelson and Sheri Sheppard), and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona (advised by Paul Wirsching). His professional work is dedicated to residual stress engineering, with published works in the areas of residual stress measurement, modeling, and fatigue assessment. Hill founded an industrial services firm in 2005, Hill Engineering, LLC, to solve difficult problems in structural materials, with a special emphasis on residual stress and fatigue engineering. Hill is a Fellow of ASME, active in the Society for Experimental Mechanics, ASTM Committee E08, and is current Chair of the Residual Stress Technical Committee of ASM International.
Last Updated: 10/31/2022
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Professor of Materials Science focusing on experimental mechanics and in particular effects of strain rate and temperature on material behavior. He graduated from Tampere University of Technology in 2008 and was a postdoc at The Ohio State University in 2009-2010. Dr. Hokka is a member of the DYMAT Governing Board since 2016.
Last Updated: 03/29/2022
Yuhang Hu
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology
SEM Awards: J. W. Dally Young Investigator
Dr. Yuhang Hu is an Associate Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard in 2011 and continued to work there as a postdoctoral fellow from 2021 to 2014. In 2015, she joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor and moved to Georgia Tech in 2018. Her research focuses on Chemomechanics of Soft Active Materials, an interdisciplinary area between Mechanics and Polymer Chemistry. Her work integrates multi-scale material characterization and multi-physics modeling. She is also the recipient of NSF CARRER Award, AFOSR YIP Award, Extreme Mechanics Letters Young Investigator Award, Journal of Applied Mechanics Award and ASME Sia Nemat-Nassar Early Career Award.
Last Updated: 11/15/2022
Shelby Hutchens
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Shelby Hutchens, an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is passionate about uncovering the fundamental physics underlying the mechanical performance of soft and bio-inspired materials. Her research aims to lay the foundation for the next generation of bio-inspired soft materials and contribute to the development of universal fracture criteria in soft solids. Shelby's path started in Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State (B.S.) and Caltech (M.S. and Ph.D.). She earned an NSF CAREER award in 2017.
Last Updated: 05/22/2025
Gianluca Iannitti
University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Gianluca Iannitti received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio in 2012. Since the beginning of his career, his research has been focused on the characterization and modeling of strength and damage of materials under extreme loading conditions such as high strain rates and high pressures. Since 2019, he has been an associate professor in Machine Design at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Peter Ifju
University of Florida
SEM Awards: F. G. Tatnall
Peter Ifju is the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Excellence Term Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Florida. He received a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering Science in 1992, an M.S. in Engineering Science and Mechanics in 1989, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1986 all from Virginia Tech. He also performed a Post-Doc at NASA Langley Research Center in the Mechanics of Materials Branch. His research activities include experimental mechanics, composite materials, unmanned aircraft systems, micro aerial vehicles, and electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs). In experimental mechanics he is known for his advances in optical methods for stress analysis with applications in composite materials and aeroelasticity. He has also been on the forefront of electric vehicle development for natural resource and wildlife applications for more that 20 years. He has been recognized with Fellow status and numerous other awards in the Society for Experimental Mechanics including serving as the President in 2012, along with serving on numerous SEM committees, and educational activities. He has co-authored two books, one on optical methods for solid mechanics stress analysis, and one on micro aerial vehicles. He has also co-authored more than 120 journal papers (three of which have received SEM sponsored journals paper of the year awards), 170 conference papers, 14 book chapters, and 7 patents. Four startup companies got their start in his lab including: Prioria Robotics, Aries Geospatial, Altavian and most recently Archer Aviation, named after his lab on Archer Road in Gainesville.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Christina Insam
Technical University of Munich
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr.-Ing. Christina Insam (b. 1994) holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM, Germany). In 2022, she obtained her doctoral degree at the Chair of Applied Mechanics (TUM), where she was supervised by Professor Rixen. Her research in Real-Time Hybrid Substructuring (RTHS) combines her interests for numerical and experimental dynamics as well as robotics. Her dissertation focuses on methods to enable testing of prosthetic feet with RTHS.
Last Updated: 05/17/2023
Matti Isakov
Tampere University, Finland
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr. Matti Isakov, a former member of the Tampere Institute for Advanced Study, works as a staff scientist in the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University, Finland in the field of advanced mechanical testing of materials. He has a background in the mechanical testing of various material groups especially at high loading rates and in cyclic loading. His current activities involve supporting the work of PhD students and other researchers in his fields of expertise as well as developing new materials testing methodologies and infrastructure.
Last Updated: 05/13/2024
Niels-Jørgen Jacobsen
Hottinger Brüel & Kjær
Mr. Jacobsen joined Brüel & Kjær (now Hottinger Brüel & Kjær (HBK)) in 1986 as a Digital Signal Processing software developer on analyzer systems. Later job positions include project manager, application specialist, vibration group manager and product manager as which he is currently working with responsibility for HBK’s structural dynamics solutions. Mr. Jacobsen has worked intensively with both theoretical and practical aspects in the fields of structural dynamics, machine diagnostics and industrial acoustics. He has been the author of several technical papers and articles and is frequently lecturing worldwide. Mr. Jacobsen holds a B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and a B.Sc. in International Business from Copenhagen Business School.
Last Updated: 08/28/2024
Helena Jin
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Helena received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. Through her Ph.D. study and fifteen years of R&D experience at Sandia National Laboratories, Helena has made significant contributions to experimental mechanics, particularly in developing experimental techniques for small scale characterization, integrating the full-field deformation measurement technique with in-situ mechanical testing and advanced imaging capabilities including optical microscope, SEM, AFM and X-ray tomography, to investigate the fundamental failure mechanisms of materials. In recent years, Helena has applied her engineering expertise to mission-critical projects for the nation. She won Sandia Employee Recognition Award and NNSA Defense Program Award of Excellence in 2021. She is currently leading the environmental requirements team in her program.
Helena has engaged with the Society of Experimental Mechanics in various capacities, serving as an author, reviewer, guest editor, session and tracker organizer, the officer for optical methods technical division, research committee chair and executive board member. Having grown within this society as a graduate student, Helena has consistently given back to the society, demonstrating her commitment and leadership through the numerous roles. In addition to her professional work, Helena is very passionate about promoting STEM among youth. She plays leading roles in multiple youth programs and non-profit organizations, both inside and outside Sandia. Helena enjoys traveling and running. Having raced in the Boston and Chicago Marathons, she is on her way to complete all six World Major Marathons.
Helena has engaged with the Society of Experimental Mechanics in various capacities, serving as an author, reviewer, guest editor, session and tracker organizer, the officer for optical methods technical division, research committee chair and executive board member. Having grown within this society as a graduate student, Helena has consistently given back to the society, demonstrating her commitment and leadership through the numerous roles. In addition to her professional work, Helena is very passionate about promoting STEM among youth. She plays leading roles in multiple youth programs and non-profit organizations, both inside and outside Sandia. Helena enjoys traveling and running. Having raced in the Boston and Chicago Marathons, she is on her way to complete all six World Major Marathons.
Last Updated: 11/19/2024
Chris Johnson
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Christopher Johnson is a Staff Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he conducted experimental and computational studies on the shock compression of granular systems and additively manufactured materials. His current research focuses on both experimental investigations and computational modeling of materials subjected to high strain-rate dynamic loading.
Last Updated: 05/31/2025
Elizabeth M. C. Jones
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Elizabeth Jones received her PhD from the University of Illinois under Professor Nancy Sottos and is currently a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Her work is split between using digital image correlation (DIC) for material model calibration and finite element model validation, and pushing the boundaries of DIC to measure deformation of samples under complex loading conditions and in harsh environments.
Last Updated: 05/31/2025
Jennifer L. Jordan
Los Alamos National Laboratory
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer, A. J. Durelli
Jennifer L. Jordan is the Deputy Program Director for Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) UK Program Office. Prior to this position, she was Group Leader for Shock and Detonation Physics, where she led 50+ staff responsible for dynamic properties of metals, polymers, and explosives. Jen has also served as the Dynamic Materials and Interactions Program Officer at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which focused on energetic materials and shock physics of heterogenous materials, and the Lead for the Munitions Energetic Materials Core Technical Competency, Air Force Research Laboratory. She received her BS, MS, and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jen’s research is focused on the high strain rate response of polymers and composites. She completed her term as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials (JDBM) in Dec 2024 and took on the chair of JDBM’s International Advisory Board. She has over 45 technical papers and proceedings publications. Jen is a recipient of the SEM A. J. Durelli (2018) and the G. A. Brewer (2021) Awards.
Last Updated: 12/19/2024
Mitchell Josvai
University of Wisconsin–Madison
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Mitchell Josvai is a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research uses induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and tissue-engineered models to investigate interactions between cardiac cells and their influence on the mechanical and electrophysiological properties of the heart. His broader interests lie at the intersection of engineering, biology, and medicine, with a particular focus on applying experimental mechanics to reveal fundamental disease mechanisms and guide the development of therapeutic strategies.
Last Updated: 06/10/2025
Michael Keller
University of Tulsa
SEM Awards: M. M. Frocht
Michael W. Keller received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tulsa in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. After completing his Ph.D. he served as a Post-doctoral researcher in the Dept. of Chemistry and Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Arizona. After his postdoctoral appointment, he joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Tulsa in 2008, where he is currently a Professor and the Associate Dean for Research of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Over his career he has received numerous honors for research and teaching, including an NSF CAREER Award (2014), the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Award (2017), University Teaching and Research Awards, and the SEM M.M. Frocht Award (2024).
Last Updated: 12/19/2024
Gaëtan Kerschen
University of Liège, Belgium
SEM Awards: D. J. DeMichele, SEM/Sage Publishing Young Engineers Award
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.
Last Updated: 11/10/2022
Christian Kettenbeil
Apple Inc.
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Christian Kettenbeil received his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology in 2019. His main research interests lie within the field of dynamic behavior of materials at very high pressures. In particular, Christian investigated the dynamic strength of brittle materials such as silica glass and ceramics using the pressure shear plate impact experiment. He then applied his experience in laser-based metrology systems and dynamic finite element simulations at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Since January 2021, he has been working as a Product Design Engineer at Apple Inc.
Last Updated: 04/21/2021
Addis Kidane
University of South Carolina
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson, J. W. Dally Young Investigator
Dr. Addis Kidane is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Defense University, Ethiopia in 2001, and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India in 2005. He received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Rhode Island in 2009. He joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina in 2011 after completing a two year postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on, energetic, cellular and graded materials, high strain rate experimental mechanics and materials behavior at different time and length scale. He is the recipient of the Orr Early Career Award from the Materials Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Young Investigator Award from AFOSR, the Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grants from ASME Applied Mechanics Division, and Young Investigator Research Award from the College of Engineering and Computing, the University of South Carolina.
Last Updated: 04/07/2020
Sangmin Kim
Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM)
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Sangmin Kim is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) in Korea. Previously, he studied mechanical properties of multilayered graphene with metals such as Cu at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Korea. His current research interests include fracture mechanics between polymers and brittle materials and also focuses on the mechanical transfer processes of light emitting diodes. Recently, he published a research paper on residue-free and suspended graphene transferred by a perforated template. Sangmin Kim is currently completing his postdoctoral studies at KIMM and hopes to find a suitable position in his research field at company.
Last Updated: 05/11/2022
Jamie Kimberley
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
SEM Awards: J. W. Dally Young Investigator
Jamie Kimberley is an Associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Thereafter he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, receiving his M.S. in Theoretical & Applied Mechanics and his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering. Upon completion of his Doctoral degree he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of K.T. Ramesh. He is the recipient of the 2019 J.W. Dally Young Investigator Award, and was appointed a Dean’s Research Scholar in 2021. His research group, the Dynamic Deformation and Failure Lab, focuses on the experimental characterization of materials/structures subjected to high rate loading and the development of physics-based of models based on the observed behavior.
Last Updated: 08/01/2022
Larissa Kopf
University of Waikato
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Larissa Kopf is a PhD student in the School of Engineering at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Her research focuses on automating defect detection and quantification using thermography, a non-destructive evaluation technique. She is developing an experimental setup that enables more efficient inspection of large structures, aiming to optimize the detection process and improve the accuracy of defect identification.
Last Updated: 03/10/2025
Sharlotte Kramer
Sandia National Laboratories
Dr. Sharlotte Kramer is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where she has worked for since 2011. She leads a research program in the Engineering Science Center that advances predictive solid mechanics for rapid transformation of qualification and sustainment of national security systems. She is the principal investigator of multi-disciplinary projects, transitioning fundamental research to mission applications at the intersection of solid mechanics, materials science, computer science, and data science, with internal Sandia collaborators and external collaborators around the globe.
Sharlotte received her Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia with Ioannis Chasiotis and her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology with G. Ravichandran. She was a postdoctoral researcher in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Nancy Sottos before joining Sandia National Laboratories. She has been a member of the Society of Experimental Mechanics since 2007 and has served as a Member at Large on the SEM Executive Board from 2023-2025. She was the founding chair of the SEM Additive and Advanced Manufacturing Technical Division and has served as the chair of the Research Committee and the Inverse Problem Methodologies Technical Division.
Sharlotte received her Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia with Ioannis Chasiotis and her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology with G. Ravichandran. She was a postdoctoral researcher in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Nancy Sottos before joining Sandia National Laboratories. She has been a member of the Society of Experimental Mechanics since 2007 and has served as a Member at Large on the SEM Executive Board from 2023-2025. She was the founding chair of the SEM Additive and Advanced Manufacturing Technical Division and has served as the chair of the Research Committee and the Inverse Problem Methodologies Technical Division.
Last Updated: 03/10/2025
Guido La Rosa
DICAR – University of Catania
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Full Professor of Mechanical Design at DICAR- University of Catania (Italy) since 2000. Manager of the Mechanical Laboratory.
Since the 80s, he taught many courses of Machine Design, Stress Analysis, Mechanical Behaviour of Materials, Biomechanics, and Integrated Product Design.
Author of more than 250 papers, among journal and proceedings, on experimental mechanics (in particular thermography and fatigue), machine design, ecodesign and biomechanics, one international book and 8 National Patents.
His research interests focus on the analysis and design of mechanical component and systems, as well as in material testing, by traditional and innovative methodologies in dynamics, biomechanics, and eco-design.
Since the 80s, he taught many courses of Machine Design, Stress Analysis, Mechanical Behaviour of Materials, Biomechanics, and Integrated Product Design.
Author of more than 250 papers, among journal and proceedings, on experimental mechanics (in particular thermography and fatigue), machine design, ecodesign and biomechanics, one international book and 8 National Patents.
His research interests focus on the analysis and design of mechanical component and systems, as well as in material testing, by traditional and innovative methodologies in dynamics, biomechanics, and eco-design.
Last Updated: 05/12/2021
Leslie Lamberson
Colorado School of Mines
SEM Awards: Springer/Nature Publishing Young Investigator Lecture
Leslie Lamberson is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering with affiliation in Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines. Her area of expertise is in mechanics of materials under extreme conditions. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and B.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Michigan, her M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and her Ph.D. in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. Prior to her faculty position, Dr. Lamberson was a postdoctoral research scholar with K.T. Ramesh in the Center for Advanced Metallic and Ceramic Systems at the Johns Hopkins University. A former Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” engineer, in 2013 Leslie was a NASA Glenn Faculty Fellow in the Materials and Structures under Extreme Conditions Division. She is the recipient of an ONR Young Investigator Award in 2017, an NSF CAREER award in 2018, and is currently an Associate Editor for the journal Strain and Technical Editor for Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials.
Last Updated: 11/10/2022
Luciano Lamberti
Politecnico di Bari (Italy)
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Prof. Luciano LAMBERTI is a Professor of Mechanical Design in the Politecnico di Bari (Italy) where he leads the Optical Techniques laboratory. His research interests cover Experimental Mechanics, Structural Optimization, Nanosciences, and Bioengineering. He specializes in optical techniques, inverse methods, optical super-resolution, cell elasticity, micro/nano-manipulation with optical resonators.
Prof. Lamberti authored some 250 technical papers in ISI journals, refereed books and conferences, receiving the Fylde Electronics Prize for the best paper published in 2010 in Strain. He chaired the Optical Methods of SEM, and was a council member of EURASEM.
Prof. Lamberti has been in the editorial board of several ISI journals since 2011 and evaluated research projects for several international agencies including the European Community Research Agency (FP7 and Horizon 2020 Programs).
Prof. Lamberti authored some 250 technical papers in ISI journals, refereed books and conferences, receiving the Fylde Electronics Prize for the best paper published in 2010 in Strain. He chaired the Optical Methods of SEM, and was a council member of EURASEM.
Prof. Lamberti has been in the editorial board of several ISI journals since 2011 and evaluated research projects for several international agencies including the European Community Research Agency (FP7 and Horizon 2020 Programs).
Last Updated: 11/19/2024
John Lambros
University of Illinois
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, M. M. Frocht, M. Hetényi, P. S. Theocaris, SEM President 2019-20
Prof. Lambros received a B.Eng. degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London in 1988, an M.S. degree in Aeronautics from Caltech in 1989, and a Ph.D. degree also in Aeronautics from Caltech in 1994. After a year as a postdoctoral researcher, he joined the Mechanical Engineering department of the University of Delaware as an Assistant Professor in 1995 and moved to the Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Illinois in 2000, where he is currently a Professor. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society for Experimental Mechanics, and the American Academy of Mechanics. He has served as an Associate Editor for Experimental Mechanics (1999-2005) and the ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics (2011-2014). He has also served on the Executive Board of the SEM (2008-2010) and recently completed one term as Associated Head for Graduate Studies in the Aerospace Engineering Department at Illinois (2011-2016). Over his 20-year career he has received numerous honors and awards for both research and teaching achievements including an NSF CAREER Award (1999), the SEM Hetényi (2012) and Frocht (2015) Awards, and the UIUC Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching (2015).
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Archana Lamsal
Michigan State University
SEM Awards: G. L. Cloud Scholarship
Archana Lamsal is a Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate at Michigan State University. She studies the kinetics and kinematics of the human body as it relates to wheelchair seating and office seating. Her current goal is to determine the frictional behavior between various pant fabrics and seat covers. This information is critical for reducing pressure injury formation which is a debilitating injury that occurs in wheelchair users. Prior to this, she investigated the biomechanics of office seating, with a particular focus on a "perched" working position.
Last Updated: 06/08/2022
Alexander K. Landauer
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Alexander Landauer is an experimental solid mechanician and mechanical engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Material Measurement Laboratory. Alex specializes in open-source full-field measurements in mechanics across applications including soft materials, impact protection, 3D printing, and cell mechanobiology. Recently, his focus has been on developing open-source measurement hardware and software, datasets, and a data framework for elastic impact mitigating materials using multiple characterization methods. Alex holds a B.S. from Clarkson University (’14, ME with Honors) and received a Ph.D. from Brown University (’19, Solid Mechanics) under Profs. Christian Franck and K.S. Kim.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Barry Lawlor
California Institute of Technology)
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Barry Lawlor is currently a fifth year PhD candidate in the MCE department at Caltech. He is working to understand the dynamic response of heterogeneous materials at the mesoscale. His research interests center on the study of dynamic behavior of materials via full-field imaging with ultrahigh-speed photography, in conjunction with numerical simulations. Prior to starting his PhD, Barry earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 2020, and his Masters of Science from Caltech in 2022.
Last Updated: 04/29/2025
Arto Lehtovaara
Tampere University, Finland (retired)
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Arto Lehtovaara, Dr. Tech., is Emeritus Professor at the Tampere University, Finland (retired in 2022). He led the Tribology and Machine Elements research group and provided corresponding education in the faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers mainly in the areas of fretting wear and fatigue occurring in combustion engines and lubricated gear and bearing contacts; the application areas include mineral crushers and gear drives in wind turbines and marine applications. He was a long-term member of the Nordic advisory board on the NORDTRIB symposium series and holds a status of honor member at Finnish Society for Tribology. He had six-year experience in the industry before the academic position, which gave a basis on active R&D related industrial co-operation.
Last Updated: 05/14/2024
Zhaowen Lin
Northwestern University
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Zhaowen Lin is currently a PhD student in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Northwestern University. His research focuses on the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms of micro- and nano-materials, and he has been working on the development of various experimental platforms including micro-electro-mechanical systems and in situ electron microscopy setups. He received his bachelor’s degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Science and Technology of China.
Last Updated: 05/11/2022
Fabio Lo Savio
University of Catania
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Prof. Fabio Lo Savio graduated in Civil Engineering at the University of Catania in 1991. He is currently Researcher and Adjunct Professor in "Mechanical and Thermal Measurements" and "Non-Destructive Evaluation of Mechanical Elements" at the University of Catania. His research is focused on the characterization of composite and biocompatible materials using traditional and customized testing machines. He is author of numerous international and national publications on devices dedicated to the testing of endodontic instruments in nickel-titanium.
Last Updated: 05/12/2021
Nuno Lopes
Society for Experimental Mechanics
Nuno Lopes is the Managing Director of the Society for Experimental Mechanics where he is responsible for day-to-day operations including the Society’s three archival peer-reviewed journals. Nuno oversees staff and reports to the Executive Director. He has been with SEM since 2013.
His 14 years at IBM provided experience working with executives and leading a team. Nuno earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management (B.B.A.) from the Ancell School of Business at Western Connecticut State University, an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited Business School.
Nuno was born Portugal. He has a passion for languages, architecture and learning.
His 14 years at IBM provided experience working with executives and leading a team. Nuno earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management (B.B.A.) from the Ancell School of Business at Western Connecticut State University, an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited Business School.
Nuno was born Portugal. He has a passion for languages, architecture and learning.
Last Updated: 01/05/2021
Zev Lovinger
Rafael, Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Israel
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Zev Lovinger works at Rafael, Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Israel, since 2001, where he is currently a senior researcher and an R&D project manager. His field of expertise is strength and failure of materials under extreme conditions. He completed his B.Sc. in 1999 and M.Sc. in 2001 in civil engineering at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. In 2014 he received his Ph.D. from the faculty of mechanical engineering at the Technion. His Ph.D. research was on shear band failure evolution in collapsing cylinders. From 2017 to 2019, he was visiting associate in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech.
Last Updated: 04/21/2021
Hongbing Lu
University of Texas at Dallas
SEM Awards: B. J. Lazan
Dr. Hongbing Lu is a mechanical engineering professor and the Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Chair affiliated with materials science and engineering, and chemistry at University of Texas at Dallas. He specializes in the mechanics of time-dependent materials. He has made theoretical and experimental contributions to viscoelastic nanoindentation to determine the viscoelastic properties at nanoscale. He has developed an accelerated life testing technique widely used for the design and reliability testing for cardiac rhythm management devices. He has invented a slitting technique for converting an aluminum web into narrower sheets when the two rotary slitting blades form a cant angle to generate a local tension to provide clean shearing while significantly extending the blade life; the technique has been widely used in aluminum industry. He has invented porous nanostructured materials (aerogels) for drastic noise attenuation, mitigating shock wave, and acceleration reduction under impact. Dr. Lu received his PhD in aeronautics from Caltech in 1997, his MS degree in engineering mechanics from Tsinghua University, and his BS degree in Solid Mechanics from Huazhong University of Science & Technology. He has published 150 journal articles, written 6 book chapters, and received five US patents. He is a fellow of SEM and ASME. He is editor-in-chief of Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials, and an associate technical editor of Experimental Mechanics.
Last Updated: 12/05/2023
Andrea Lupini
University of Michigan
SEM Awards: D. J. DeMichele Scholarship
Andrea Lupini is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. His research blends state-of-the-art computational tools and novel damping concepts for the characterization and reduction of vibration in turbomachinery blisks. The computational methods he developed can be implemented by aircraft engine manufacturers to ensure the reliability of bisks during the design phase, in particular addressing the issue of repairs, or blends. His current focus is on the design and improvement of novel nonlinear vibration damping concepts applied to turbomachinery blisks. In the past, he collaborated with the sports car manufacturer Ferrari and electric vehicle producer Tesla, working on durability and vibrations. Andrea holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Parma, and a classical guitar diploma from the Conservatory of Parma.
Last Updated: 03/04/2025
Kimberley Mac Donald
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: G. L. Cloud Scholarship
Kimberley Mac Donald is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (NSF GRFP). She obtained her B.S. in Architectural Engineering and M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Miami, Florida in 2014. She also received her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech in 2017. Kimberley’s research interests include damage mechanics and assessment, particularly in-situ and non-destructive experimental techniques. Her doctoral research brings together current optical techniques, such as confocal microscopy imaging and image correlation methods, to explore problems in granular and fracture mechanics in new ways.
Last Updated: 05/01/2018
Daniel Magagnosc
DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Daniel Magagnosc is a materials engineer at the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory. His current research interests focus on the study of structural metals and ceramics through in situ mechanical testing and high throughput testing methods. He completed his bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering at Penn State University in 2010. He received his PhD in materials science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 where his dissertation focused on the nanomechanics of metallic glasses.
Last Updated: 05/11/2022
Mike Mains
University of Cincinnati
Michael Mains received his B.S and M.S in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1990 and 1994, respectively.
Mike is currently a 14-year member of Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM), preparing to serve at the Upcoming International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC) as the Conference Director. He is also serving as the chair of the Modal Analysis and Dynamic Systems Technical Division and has been a member of SEM’s executive board. He has also been active in the “Basics of Modal Analysis for the New/Young Engineer” sessions at IMAC, a series of lectures, tutorials and vendor presentations designed for first time IMAC attendees and those attendees returning from an extended absence from IMAC.
Mike joined Brüel & Kjær as a Senior Software Developer in the winter of 2004. During his employment with Brüel & Kjær he has had the opportunity to work on many software projects related to Structural Dynamics, Modal Analysis Modal Vector Correlation and Signal Processing.
This fall Mr. Mains joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as an Adjunct Professor, teaching Automotive Design I & II. This is a Senior Level Design course sequence that supports the UC Formula SAE Team, a continuation of the Bearcat Motorsports activity that began in the early 1990s.
Mike is currently a 14-year member of Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM), preparing to serve at the Upcoming International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC) as the Conference Director. He is also serving as the chair of the Modal Analysis and Dynamic Systems Technical Division and has been a member of SEM’s executive board. He has also been active in the “Basics of Modal Analysis for the New/Young Engineer” sessions at IMAC, a series of lectures, tutorials and vendor presentations designed for first time IMAC attendees and those attendees returning from an extended absence from IMAC.
Mike joined Brüel & Kjær as a Senior Software Developer in the winter of 2004. During his employment with Brüel & Kjær he has had the opportunity to work on many software projects related to Structural Dynamics, Modal Analysis Modal Vector Correlation and Signal Processing.
This fall Mr. Mains joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as an Adjunct Professor, teaching Automotive Design I & II. This is a Senior Level Design course sequence that supports the UC Formula SAE Team, a continuation of the Bearcat Motorsports activity that began in the early 1990s.
Last Updated: 10/21/2020
Zhu Mao
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
SEM Awards: Sage Publishing Young Engineer Lecture, D. J. DeMichele Scholarship, J. W. Dally Young Investigator
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.
Last Updated: 03/31/2022
Tim Marinone
ATA Engineering, Inc.
Tim Marinone is a Project Engineer in the Advanced Test Group at ATA Engineering, Inc. in San Diego, California. His expertise is in modal and vibration testing of complex structures for defense, commercial, and aerospace industries. Tim received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2010 and 2012, respectively, while working in the Structural Dynamics and Acoustic Systems Laboratory (SDASL). Tim has been involved in IMAC since IMAC 29, serving in various roles, including presenting at the “Basics of Modal Analysis for the New/Young Engineer” session and writing numerous papers.
Last Updated: 10/22/2020
Robin Martens
Technical University Eindhoven (student)
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Robin Martens began his bachelor Biomedical Engineering in 2012 at TU/e, broadening his knowledge by following extracurricular courses. He continued with the master Biomedical engineering in the research group Cardiovascular Biomechanics (CVBM) combined with the master Mechanical Engineering in the research group Mechanics of Materials. He went to Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (KTH) in Stockholm for his internship. After finishing both masters in 2018, he continued with a PhD guided by Johan Hoefnagels, Olaf van der Sluis and Marc Geers. A combined numerical/experimental approach is used to understand the residual stresses and mechanical behavior in capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers(CMUT).
Last Updated: 07/08/2021
Luke Martin
Naval Surface Warfare Center
SEM Awards: SAGE Publishing Young Engineer Lecture
Luke A. Martin earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2011. He is currently employed with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division as a Technical Expert. Luke’s interest in vibration measurements and analysis began when he used vibration measurements and Fourier analysis for predictive maintenance of rotating equipment during an undergraduate internship. Upon graduation from West Virginia University Institute of Technology, he pursued graduate studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute earning a Master of Science in 2004. His research and professional interest has spanned from modeling viscoelastic materials undergoing shock loading to pioneering the Navy’s first multiple degree of freedom random vibration test for a major weapon system. He has authored over twenty-two significant publications or briefings.
Last Updated: 01/21/2021
Randall Mayes
Sandia National Laboratories (retired)
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, D. J. DeMichele
Randy Mayes began his structural dynamics career as a finite element analyst using NASTRAN in 1979 at Sandia National Laboratories. He moved into the modal testing group in 1989 where he worked until retirement in 2020. He has always enjoyed the friendly IMAC conference of SEM. An ElliptiGO stand-up bicycle and a classical guitar provide great hobbies. His favorite paraphrased scripture from the book of James is “Count it a joyous opportunity when you have an interruption or obstacle to your plans. As you patiently watch God work it out, He will change you into a fantastic person”.
Last Updated: 01/04/2022
Molly McCord
University of Wisconsin–Madison
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Molly McCord is currently a fourth year Biophysics PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her research focuses on understanding the physics of collective cell migration. Specifically, her work concentrates on how forces and energy shape coordinated motion in epithelial tissues.
Last Updated: 06/16/2025
Michael Mello
California Institute of Technology
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Michael Mello is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering (MCE) at Caltech. He earned a B.S. degree in physics from Bridgewater State College, an M.S. degree in optics from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. from Caltech (GALCIT). Mike began his career as a research engineer in the Brown University plate impact lab from 1988–1997. He later worked at Intel from 1997–2006 as an electronics packaging engineer, where he supported product certification and metrology development and managed the company’s premier mechanical testing laboratory. Mike is also currently an Associate Technical Editor of Experimental Mechanics, a post he has held since 2013.
Last Updated: 04/21/2021
Hadi Mirmohammad
University of Utah (student)
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Hadi Mirmohammad received his bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran in 2016. He joined the “High Strain-Rate Mechanics of Materials Laboratory” at the University of Utah under the direction of Dr. Owen Kingstedt in 2017 in pursuit of his master’s. Hadi worked on transitioning the Grid-Method to microscale during his master's. After graduating with his master’s in 2019, he continued with his Ph.D. in the same research group. The subject of his Ph.D. is "Benchmarking Microscale Ductility Measurements" funded by DOE-NEUP. In his free time, Hadi likes to play his acoustic and electric guitars as well as biking and skiing.
Last Updated: 07/08/2021
Yasushi Miyano
Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT)
SEM Awards: S. Nemat-Nasser, SEM Fellow, B. J. Lazan
Yasushi Miyano is a Professor of Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT) in Japan. He was the director of Materials System Research Laboratory at KIT from 1981 to 2020 and now he is an adviser of this laboratory. His research is focused on the prediction methodology for the long-term fatigue life of polymer composites and structures based on the time-temperature superposition principle for the viscoelasticity of polymer matrix. For 50 years, he has been publishing the research works for academic journals. His recent and important accomplishment is to have published a book entitled “Durability of Fiber-Reinforced Polymers” from Wiley-VCH with Professor Masayuki Nakada of KIT. He has been an active member of SEM since 1980. He conducted Composites Durability Workshops with Professors Stephen Tsai and Richard Christensen of Stanford University for 20 times from 1998 to 2015. He is funded from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and other Japan government organizations.
Last Updated: 01/24/2023
Stephan Nickell
ZEISS - Oberkochen, Germany
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Stephan Nickell earned his Diploma degree in Physics from the University in Heidelberg and his doctoral degree from the Technical University in Munich. In his studies he turned towards optics and electron microscopy. He was working as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich where he contributed to the development of cryo electron microscopy and structural biology. In 2011, Stephan Nickell joined ZEISS in Oberkochen, Germany. Stephan Nickell is currently Head of Product Management Academia & Other Industry for the ZEISS MultiSEM.
Last Updated: 05/15/2024
Hae Young Noh
Stanford University
Hae Young Noh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Her research focuses on indirect sensing and physics-guided data analytics to enable low-cost non-intrusive monitoring of human-structure systems. She is particularly interested in developing structures to be self-user-, and surrounding-aware to improve users’ quality of life and provide safe and sustainable built environments. The results of her work have been deployed in a number of real-world applications from trains, to the Amish community, to eldercare centers, to pig farms. Before joining Stanford, she was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering and her second M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She earned her B.S. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. She received several awards, including the Google Faculty Research Awards (2013, 2016), the Dean’s Early Career Fellow (2018), the NSF CAREER Award (2017), and various Best Paper Awards from ASCE, ASME, ACM, IEEE, and SEM conferences.
Last Updated: 06/14/2023
Anders Nord
Volvo Group Trucks Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr. Anders Nord is the current acting global feature leader for durability within Volvo Group Trucks Technology, situated in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been with the Volvo group for three years. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. His research interests include model calibration, dynamic substructuring and system identification.
Last Updated: 04/14/2020
Chung-Seog Oh
Kumoh National Institute of Technology
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Chung-Seog Oh is currently a professor in the Department of Mechanical System Engineering, Kumoh National Institute of Technology in Korea. He previously did research at Johns Hopkins University, UIUC, and Northwestern University as a visiting professor. He received his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from KAIST. He has worked in the field of measuring the mechanical properties of materials ranging from macro- to nano-scale. His current research interests include microscopic behavior of micro- and nano-materials, synthesis and evaluation of colorless and transparent polyimide films, micro-LED transfer, microstructure fabrication and behavior studies using a focused ion beam, and experimental and finite element stress analysis. His papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Experimental Mechanics, Carbon, Materials Letters, International Journal of Fatigue, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, etc. He likes to collaborate with other researchers in other countries.
Last Updated: 05/11/2022
Geir Olafsson
University of Bristol
I joined the University of Bristol in September 2020 after completing my PhD at the University of Southampton, where I specialized in Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques. My research has been particularly focused on NDE and the development of continuous monitoring systems for composites and bonded joints. I have developed new continuous monitoring approaches alongside adapting existing NDE methodologies. I also have extensive industrial experience having previously worked in the oil and gas sector as well as in offshore wind industries. Additionally, I am a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
Last Updated: 01/21/2024
Aydogan Ozcan
California NanoSystems Institute, UCLA
Dr. Aydogan Ozcan is the Chancellor’s Professor and the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation at UCLA and an HHMI Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also the Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. Dr. Ozcan is elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and holds >85 issued/granted patents in microscopy, holography, computational imaging, sensing, mobile diagnostics, nonlinear optics and fiber-optics, and is also the author of one book and the co-author of >1000 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific journals/conferences. Dr. Ozcan received major awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), International Commission for Optics ICO Prize, Dennis Gabor Award (SPIE), Joseph Fraunhofer Award & Robert M. Burley Prize (Optica), SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, Rahmi Koc Science Medal, SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, Army Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Navy Young Investigator Award, IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award and Distinguished Lecturer Award, National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award, National Academy of Engineering The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Award and MIT’s TR35 Award for his seminal contributions to computational imaging, sensing and diagnostics. Dr. Ozcan is elected Fellow of Optica, AAAS, SPIE, IEEE, AIMBE, RSC, APS and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is a Lifetime Fellow Member of Optica, NAI, AAAS, SPIE and APS. Dr. Ozcan is also listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Web of Science, Clarivate.
Last Updated: 10/16/2024
H. Nevzat Özgüven
Middle East Technical University
Dr. H. Nevzat Özgüven (PhD, The University of Manchester) is a Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at METU (Türkiye) with over 40 years of experience in mechanical vibrations. His primary research interests include gear dynamics, machine tool dynamics, and both linear and nonlinear structural dynamics. His work on nonlinear systems has focused particularly in the areas of identification of nonlinearity, analytical and experimental nonlinear modal analysis, and nonlinear substructuring. Dr. Özgüven has been a Visiting Fulbright Professor at The Ohio State University for two years and a TUM Global Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich. His extensive administrative experience includes serving as Vice President of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye for over five years and as Vice President of METU for eight years. He is an ASME Fellow and is a member of the Science Academy (Türkiye).
Last Updated: 09/05/2024
Benjamin Pacini
Sandia National Laboratories
Benjamin Pacini is a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories where he has been working since 2011 after receiving his B.S and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Oklahoma State University, respectively. In 2013 he joined the Experimental Structural Dynamics Department and has conducted modal tests on a variety of structures ranging from Saguaro cactus to aerospace structures. His research interest has been, and will always be, nonlinear structural dynamics with a particular focus on bolted joints. With three young boys at home, his free time is filled with chasing them around, whether in a back yard soccer game or on a hiking trail in the mountains.
Last Updated: 09/04/2024
Garrett Pataky
Clemson University
SEM Awards: J. W. Dally Young Investigator
Dr. Garrett J. Pataky is an Associate Professor at Clemson University in Clemson, SC, USA. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florida, and his Master’s and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently the chair of the Fracture and Fatigue technical division and secretary for the Society for Experimental Mechanics Education Foundation. He serves as an Associate Technical Editor for Experimental Mechanics. His technical and teaching accomplishments are noted by several awards including the Clemson College of Engineering, Computing, and Applied Science’s (CECAS) Byars Prize Award for Excellence in Teaching, the CECAS Murray Stokely Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and PCI Journal George D. Nasser Award. His research is supported by NSF, DOE, NASA, and industrial partners. His research interests focus on understanding material behavior and fracture and fatigue mechanisms using multiscale experiments.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Eugenio Pedullà
University of Catania
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr. Eugenio Pedullà was graduated with honors in Dentistry at the University of Catania in 2003, he obtained his Ph.D. at the same university in 2007 and Master's Degree at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome in 2008. He is currently Researcher and Professor in Dentistry at the University of Catania where he is professor of Conservative dentistry and Endodontics. Dr. Pedullà is author of international and national publications on nickel-titanium instruments and endodontics. Italian Original Research in 2014. Moreover, Dr. Pedullà acts as private practitioner in Catania practicing especially Endodontics and Operative Dentistry.
Author of more than 250 papers, among journal and proceedings, on experimental mechanics (in particular thermography and fatigue), machine design, ecodesign and biomechanics, one international book and 8 National Patents.
His research interests focus on the analysis and design of mechanical component and systems, as well as in material testing, by traditional and innovative methodologies in dynamics, biomechanics, and eco-design.
Author of more than 250 papers, among journal and proceedings, on experimental mechanics (in particular thermography and fatigue), machine design, ecodesign and biomechanics, one international book and 8 National Patents.
His research interests focus on the analysis and design of mechanical component and systems, as well as in material testing, by traditional and innovative methodologies in dynamics, biomechanics, and eco-design.
Last Updated: 05/12/2021
Fabrice Pierron
University of Southampton
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer, SEM Fellow
Dr. Fabrice Pierron has been a Professor of Solid Mechanics at the University of Southampton since 2012. He is a specialist in the integration of image-based deformation mapping (like digital image correlation) with inverse identification (like the Virtual Fields Method) to design the next generation of mechanical tests. He has published more than 150 journal articles. He was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Strain (Wiley) for ten years and is a co-founder of the company MatchID NV (Ghent, Belgium), for which he now also works as R&D Director since 2021. Prof. Pierron is a Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM).
Last Updated: 11/06/2023
Tresa Pollock
University of California, Santa Barbara
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Tresa Pollock is the Alcoa Professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Pollock’s research focuses on the mechanical and environmental performance of materials in extreme environments, unique high temperature materials processing paths, ultrafast laser-material interactions, alloy design and 3-D materials characterization. Pollock graduated with a B.S. from Purdue University in 1984, and a Ph.D. from MIT in 1989. She was employed at General Electric Aircraft Engines from 1989 to 1991, where she conducted research and development on high temperature alloys for aircraft turbine engines and co-developed the single crystal alloy René N6 (now in service). Pollock was a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University from 1991 to 1999 and the University of Michigan from 2000 - 2010. Her recent research has focused on development of new femtosecond laser-aided 3-D tomography techniques, damage detection and modeling by resonant ultrasound spectroscopy, thermal barrier coatings systems, new intermetallic-containing cobalt-base materials, nickel base alloys for turbine engines, lightweight magnesium alloys, Heusler-based thermoelectrics and bulk nanolaminates. Professor Pollock was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2005, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2015 and is a Fellow of TMS and ASM International. She serves as Editor in Chief of the Metallurgical and Materials Transactions family of journals and was the 2005-2006 President of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.
Last Updated: 04/06/2020
Vikas Prakash
Institute for Shock Physics
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Vikas Prakash is a Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for Shock Physics with affiliate appointments in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the Washington State University, Pullman, WA. Over the years, he has made use of his knowledge in engineering mechanics and materials to work on fundamental problems related to friction, strength and failure of solids under intense stress wave loading. A parallel focus of his research has been in nanoengineering in the development of novel hybrid carbon-based nanomaterials for advanced light-weight thermal management concepts and multifunctional structural materials with energy storage capabilities. He is an author of over 225 technical articles in archival journals and refereed conference proceedings with his graduate students and collaborators. He has served on the Editorial Board of the international journal of Experimental Mechanics as an Associate Technical Editor, and currently serves as a member on the Advisory Board member of the Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials. He is an elected fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and served as the Chair of the ASME Materials Division during 2011-12. He has been an invited participant to the 2006 Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) Symposium, Irvine, CA, organized by the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He received his B-Tech in 1985 from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from University of Rhode Island in 1988, and Ph.D. in Engineering from Brown University in 1993.
Last Updated: 01/04/2022
Michael B. Prime
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, A. J. Durelli, F. Zandman
Mike received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley in 1994 and has worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for 26 years. He is known worldwide for the invention of the contour method for residual stress measurement, which is used extensively in industry and is the focus of startup companies in California and the UK. Mike is also known for some important early contributions on structural health monitoring and recent advances in modeling and measurement of material behavior in extreme conditions. Mike was named a Fellow at LANL in 2019, a rare honor for an engineer.
Last Updated: 12/02/2020
Barton Prorok
Auburn University
SEM Awards: S. Nemat-Nasser, M. Hetényi
Barton C. Prorok, Professor and Chair of Materials Engineering at Auburn University, has made impactful contributions to experimental mechanics, focusing on understanding material behavior and developing innovative experimental methods. His research spans a broad range of materials including thin films, composites, ceramics, functional materials, biomineralized structures, natural materials, and, more recently, additively manufactured metals. An SEM member since 2002 and a 2005 M. Hetényi awardee, his work has been featured in a live CNN interview and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as well as the cover of industrial periodicals such as Additive Manufacturing Magazine. He is a dedicated mentor, fostering the next generation of engineers through his leadership and commitment to education.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Mouliswar Ramapuram Ramakumaresan
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Mouliswar is currently a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research focuses on understanding the high strain rate behavior of architected materials and structures through high-throughput experimental methods. At the core of his work lies the integration of in-situ diagnostics with data-driven approaches to develop predictive and physically interpretable models of material response under extreme conditions. His interests span experimental solid mechanics and machine learning, with an emphasis on the design of materials and structures for improved energy absorption and damage mitigation. He is also concurrently pursuing his master's from the department of Mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Last Updated: 06/16/2025
Krishnamurthi Ramesh
Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras
SEM Awards: M. M. Frocht, F. Zandman
Professor Krishnamurthi Ramesh is currently the K Mahesh Chair Professor at the Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras.
He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and has made significant contributions to the advancement of Digital Photoelasticity. Written the widely referenced first monograph on Digital Photoelasticity, Springer in 2000, and published a book on Developments in Photoelasticity: A renaissance, IOP in 2021 to popularize the use of photoelasticity in diverse fields. His lectures on Engineering Mechanics, Experimental Stress Analysis, and Engineering Fracture Mechanics are available on YouTube. He has also developed a virtual polariscope for online teaching and simulation and processing software for Photoelastic analysis.
He has received several recognitions: Zandman award in 2012, Distinguished Alumnus Award of NIT, Trichy (2008), and Member of the Editorial Boards of International Journals.
He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and has made significant contributions to the advancement of Digital Photoelasticity. Written the widely referenced first monograph on Digital Photoelasticity, Springer in 2000, and published a book on Developments in Photoelasticity: A renaissance, IOP in 2021 to popularize the use of photoelasticity in diverse fields. His lectures on Engineering Mechanics, Experimental Stress Analysis, and Engineering Fracture Mechanics are available on YouTube. He has also developed a virtual polariscope for online teaching and simulation and processing software for Photoelastic analysis.
He has received several recognitions: Zandman award in 2012, Distinguished Alumnus Award of NIT, Trichy (2008), and Member of the Editorial Boards of International Journals.
Last Updated: 11/27/2023
Oliver Rantalainen
Tampere University
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
MSc. Oliver Rantalainen studied mechanical engineering in Tampere University (formerly Tampere University of Technology). His Master’s thesis project, carried out in the Materials Science and Environmental Engineering unit in Tampere University, focused on the mechanical design of the large-scale Rotating Beam Fatigue Machine discussed in the awarded paper. After obtaining his degree, Rantalainen has continued working as mechanical designer for different industry sectors including paper machinery, forestry and robotics.
Last Updated: 05/13/2024
Ernesto Rapisarda
University of Catania
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Prof. Ernesto Rapisarda was graduated in Medicine and Surgery in 1977, specialized in Dentistry and Dental Prosthetics in 1980 at the University of Catania.
He is retired Full Professor in the Odontostomatological Diseases sector at the University of Catania. Former director of the Department of General Surgery and Medical Surgical Specialties and former president of the Degree Course in Dentistry and Dental Prosthetics. Prof. Rapisarda is author of international and national publications on nickel-titanium instruments and endodontics. Moreover, he acts as private practitioner in Catania practicing especially Endodontics and Operative Dentistry.
He is retired Full Professor in the Odontostomatological Diseases sector at the University of Catania. Former director of the Department of General Surgery and Medical Surgical Specialties and former president of the Degree Course in Dentistry and Dental Prosthetics. Prof. Rapisarda is author of international and national publications on nickel-titanium instruments and endodontics. Moreover, he acts as private practitioner in Catania practicing especially Endodontics and Operative Dentistry.
Last Updated: 05/12/2021
Suraj Ravindran
University of South Carolina
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Suraj Ravindran is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), working on the high-pressure dynamic behavior of materials. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2018. During his Ph.D. research, he developed a novel experimental technique to measure the local strain and temperatures at high spatiotemporal resolution. His research interests are in the mechanics of materials under extreme pressure, strain rate, and temperature.
Last Updated: 04/21/2021
Guruswami Ravichandran
California Institute of Technology
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson, P. S. Theocaris
Guruswami (Ravi) Ravichandran is the John E. Goode, Jr. Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics and Structures from Brown University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Academia Europaea. He is a Fellow of AAM, ASME, and SEM. His awards include the Murray Lecture (SEM), Eringen Medal (SES), and Koiter Medal (ASME). His research interests include deformation, failure, dynamic behavior, micro/nano mechanics, active materials, cell mechanics, and experimental methods.Guruswami (Ravi) Ravichandran is the John E. Goode, Jr. Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics and Structures from Brown University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Academia Europaea. He is a Fellow of AAM, ASME, and SEM. His awards include the Murray Lecture (SEM), Eringen Medal (SES), and Koiter Medal (ASME). His research interests include deformation, failure, dynamic behavior, micro/nano mechanics, active materials, cell mechanics, and experimental methods.
Last Updated: 11/14/2022
Emily Retzlaff
US Naval Academy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Emily Retzlaff is currently an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department at the US Naval Academy. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University, advised by Dr. K.T. Ramesh. Her dissertation focused on temperature and dynamic strain rate effects on aluminum alloys. Dr Retzlaff then completed a post doc at the Army Research Lab, advised by Dr. Brian Schuster and Dr. Dan Casem. While at ARL she developed an optically instrumented miniature Kolsky bar. Dr Retzlaff has been a member of SEM since 2008 and is Chair of the Additive and Advanced Manufacturing technical division.
Last Updated: 05/21/2024
Phillip Reu
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: G.A. Brewer, SEM Fellow, International Symposium on MEMS and Nanotechnology – Best Paper
Dr. Phillip L. Reu is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He has received an MS in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MS and PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison (2002). Phillip specializes in developing novel full-field measurement techniques in previously un-measurable regimes often using digital image correlation (DIC) or coherent optical measurement techniques. He was awarded the Brewer award for outstanding experimentalist from SEM in 2016. Current research efforts in DIC are focused on uncertainty quantification. Phillip is the author of the “Art and Application of DIC” article series in the journal of Experimental Techniques, international instructor in DIC techniques for “Metrology beyond colors”, chair of the DIC Challenge, president of the international digital image correlation society (iDICs), author of more than 30 peer reviewed journal articles, and pater familias to 6 kids.
Dr. Phillip L. Reu earned a Master’s of Science in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s of Science and a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Phil specializes in developing novel full-field measurement techniques in previously un-measurable regimes often using digital image correlation (DIC) or coherent optical measurement techniques. He has been instrumental in the popularization and wide-spread adoption of full-field and optical measurement techniques both at Sandia and globally. Phillip is the founding Vice President & current President of the International Digital Image Correlation Society (iDICs), and an international instructor in DIC techniques and best practices, training over 90 Sandians as well as researchers at LANL, AWE and the DoD. Phil’s leadership and technical contributions in developing and deploying these techniques, have been critical in proving that digital high-speed cameras can be used to make quantitative measurements with an understanding of the uncertainty, enabling their widespread use at the labs today.
Dr. Phillip L. Reu earned a Master’s of Science in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s of Science and a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Phil specializes in developing novel full-field measurement techniques in previously un-measurable regimes often using digital image correlation (DIC) or coherent optical measurement techniques. He has been instrumental in the popularization and wide-spread adoption of full-field and optical measurement techniques both at Sandia and globally. Phillip is the founding Vice President & current President of the International Digital Image Correlation Society (iDICs), and an international instructor in DIC techniques and best practices, training over 90 Sandians as well as researchers at LANL, AWE and the DoD. Phil’s leadership and technical contributions in developing and deploying these techniques, have been critical in proving that digital high-speed cameras can be used to make quantitative measurements with an understanding of the uncertainty, enabling their widespread use at the labs today.
Last Updated: 03/04/2020
Paul Reynolds
FSD Active Ltd.
SEM Awards: F. G. Tatnall
Paul Reynolds had a distinguished 23-year academic career at the Universities of Sheffield and Exeter, during which time he carried out world-leading research into vibration serviceability of civil engineering structures and structural vibration control, with more than 160 publications in this field. In January 2022, Paul moved out of academia to take up the position of CEO of FSD Active Ltd, a company he founded in 2020 to commercialise active mass damping technology for building floors and other structures. Paul has also been a founding director of Full Scale Dynamics Ltd since 2008, a specialist consultancy carrying out testing, monitoring analysis and design work in the area of civil engineering vibration, and he remains an Honorary Professor at University of Exeter.
Paul has been an active member of SEM for more than two decades, serving on the Editorial Boards of Experimental Techniques since 2008 and Experimental Mechanics since 2011, also serving as Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Techniques from 2016-2020. He has also served on the Honors Committee, Applications Committee and as a Member At Large of the Executive Board.
Professor Reynolds is also a regular consultant to industry in vibration serviceability and related areas, including dynamic testing and monitoring of a number of UK sports stadia and examining solutions to the London Millennium Bridge problem. He is also a Director of Full Scale Dynamics Limited, a University spin-off company that was established in 2008.
Paul has been an active member of SEM for more than two decades, serving on the Editorial Boards of Experimental Techniques since 2008 and Experimental Mechanics since 2011, also serving as Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Techniques from 2016-2020. He has also served on the Honors Committee, Applications Committee and as a Member At Large of the Executive Board.
Professor Reynolds is also a regular consultant to industry in vibration serviceability and related areas, including dynamic testing and monitoring of a number of UK sports stadia and examining solutions to the London Millennium Bridge problem. He is also a Director of Full Scale Dynamics Limited, a University spin-off company that was established in 2008.
Last Updated: 11/08/2023
Sara Ricci
University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Sara Ricci got her master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. Since 2021, she has been a PhD Student in Methods, Models and Technologies for Engineering at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. She has been a visiting PhD Student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, and at Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA. Her research focuses on characterizing and modeling materials’ behavior and failure under different stress states and loading conditions, with significant attention to shear-sensitive alloys and additively manufactured metals.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Mark Richardson
Vibrant Technology, Inc.
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Dr. Mark Richardson co-founded Vibrant Technology, Inc. in 1991, and is currently its President and CEO. Vibrant is the developer of the MEscope™ software family of post-test noise and vibration analysis tools.
Mark received a BSME degree in 1964, MSME degree in 1966, and PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1969, all from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
In 1991, Mark and another engineer from GenRad founded Vibrant Technology, Inc. Vibrant developed a new Operating Deflection Shape (ODS) and modal analysis software package called MEscope™. The primary function of MEscope™ is the animated display of ODS’s and mode shapes in slow, amplified motion on a 3D model of a test article. MEscope™ is sold worldwide through a network of resellers along with other vibration-related products like multi-channel acquisition hardware, accelerometers, hammers, and shakers.
Mark received a BSME degree in 1964, MSME degree in 1966, and PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1969, all from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
In 1991, Mark and another engineer from GenRad founded Vibrant Technology, Inc. Vibrant developed a new Operating Deflection Shape (ODS) and modal analysis software package called MEscope™. The primary function of MEscope™ is the animated display of ODS’s and mode shapes in slow, amplified motion on a 3D model of a test article. MEscope™ is sold worldwide through a network of resellers along with other vibration-related products like multi-channel acquisition hardware, accelerometers, hammers, and shakers.
Last Updated: 11/19/2024
Daniel Rittel
Technion, IIT
SEM Awards: W. M. Murray Lecture, B. J. Lazan
Prof. Daniel Rittel, formerly the Zandman Chair in Experimental Mechanics and head of the Materials Mechanics Center, is an emeritus professor in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Technion. D. Rittel was the Clark B. Millikan Visiting Professor in Aeronautics (2007) at Caltech where he holds a Visiting Associate position. He was the incumbent of a Catedra de Excellencia at UC3M (Madrid) in 2012 and 2019, where he is now Honorary Professor. Throughout the years, D. Rittel has developed expertise in many experimental aspects of dynamic failure, including fracture mechanics, constitutive behavior, dynamic failure mechanisms and numerical modeling, and more recently dental biomechanics and soft matter. D. Rittel’s interest is in the thermomechanics and physics of dynamic failure, specifically dynamic fragmentation, fracture, adiabatic shear banding and hysteretic heating. In 2015, D. Rittel, ASME and SEM Fellow, was awarded the prestigious Gili Agostinelli Prize (Torino Academy of Sciences, Italy) for his work on adiabatic shear localization, and in 2018, he was awarded the B. J. Lazan Award from the SEM. He was recently elected member of Academia Europae and European Academy of Arts and Sciences. As of today, he has co-authored 230 scientific publications.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Daniel Rixen
Technical University of Munich (Germany)
SEM Awards: SEM Past President (2020-21), D. R. Harting
Professor Rixen, (b. 1967) received his engineering degree from the University of Liège (ULg, Belgium) and an MSc degree in Aerospace Vehicle Design from the College of Aeronautics in Cranfield (UK). He obtained his doctorate degree from ULg in 1997, supervised by Professor Géradin. After a research assistantship at the Center for Aerospace of the University of Colorado (USA), he became in 2000 full professor at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) as Chair of Engineering Dynamics. Since 2012 he is heading the Department of Applied Mechanics at TUM. His field of interest includes theoretical, numerical and experimental aspects of the dynamics of structures and mechatronical systems.
Last Updated: 05/17/2023
Jon Rogers
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: F. G. Tatnall Award, SEM Fellow
Dr. Rogers received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University in 1980, 1984 and 1986, respectively. Jon joined Sandia in the fall of 1986 in the Vibration Testing Division. In the test organization, he worked as the test engineer for vibration and shock testing on a number of systems. Jon was the project leader for the VIBRAFUGE development project which placed a 4000 lb force rated shaker on the 29-foot underground centrifuge, and for the Acoustic Test Facility development project. This resulted in the construction of the 16,000 cu. ft., high-level chamber with combined acoustic and vibration test capabilities.
Jon moved to Systems Studies in the fall of 1992. He has worked on a variety of studies including Advanced Manufacturing, the Impact of Technology on the Economy, and many studies involving the weapons program and Underground Facilities. Jon was made a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the fall of 2002 and was promoted to manager in the fall of 2003. He is currently the manager of the Strategic Weapons Studies Department which focuses primarily on nuclear and conventional weapons related issues.
Jon has been an active member of the Society for Experimental Mechanics since 1981. He has served many roles for the Society, including: Member of the Executive Board, Chairman of the Technical Program for the Annual Meeting (4 times), President of the Society, Associate Technical Editor of Experimental Techniques, Chairman of the Editorial Council, and Treasurer of the Society.
Jon moved to Systems Studies in the fall of 1992. He has worked on a variety of studies including Advanced Manufacturing, the Impact of Technology on the Economy, and many studies involving the weapons program and Underground Facilities. Jon was made a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the fall of 2002 and was promoted to manager in the fall of 2003. He is currently the manager of the Strategic Weapons Studies Department which focuses primarily on nuclear and conventional weapons related issues.
Jon has been an active member of the Society for Experimental Mechanics since 1981. He has served many roles for the Society, including: Member of the Executive Board, Chairman of the Technical Program for the Annual Meeting (4 times), President of the Society, Associate Technical Editor of Experimental Techniques, Chairman of the Editorial Council, and Treasurer of the Society.
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Daniel Rohe
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: SAGE Publishing Young Engineer Lecture
Dr. Daniel Rohe is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. Dan works in the Experimental Structural Dynamics department where he specializes in dynamic characterization testing using non-contact diagnostics and MIMO vibration control. His current research focus is in incorporating radiographic measurements into modal tests.
Last Updated: 08/28/2024
Marco Rossi
Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy)
Marco Rossi is an Associate Professor at Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy), where he co-leads the Impact and Material Mechanics Lab. He earned his PhD from the same university and pursued postdoctoral research at ENSAM ParisTech and MIT before joining the faculty.
His research focuses on inverse methods for material property identification, full-field measurements, uncertainty quantification, and non-linear constitutive modeling, with a particular emphasis on plasticity and damage mechanics. He is one of the core developers of the Virtual Fields Method for plasticity and actively contributes to the development of novel testing protocols for advanced material characterization, aligning with the Material Testing 2.0 philosophy.
Recently, he has been integrating machine learning techniques into his research to further enhance these methodologies.
His research focuses on inverse methods for material property identification, full-field measurements, uncertainty quantification, and non-linear constitutive modeling, with a particular emphasis on plasticity and damage mechanics. He is one of the core developers of the Virtual Fields Method for plasticity and actively contributes to the development of novel testing protocols for advanced material characterization, aligning with the Material Testing 2.0 philosophy.
Recently, he has been integrating machine learning techniques into his research to further enhance these methodologies.
Last Updated: 03/12/2025
Andrew Ruggiero
University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Andrew Ruggiero is Associate Professor of Machine Design at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio and Scientific Director of the Engineering Design Laboratory, Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Research interests: Impact Dynamics (characterization and modeling of the mechanical behavior of conventional and advanced materials subject to extreme loading conditions) and Continuum Damage Mechanics (development and implementation of damage models for failure prediction even in structured materials with specific attention to the multiscale approach). Member of: Italian Scientific Society of Mechanical Engineering Design; American Physical Society - Shock Compression of Condensed Matter Group.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Sez Atamturktur Russcher
Clemson University
SEM Awards: Dominick DeMichele Scholarship
Dr. Sez Atamturktur Russcher returned to Clemson University in July 2023 as Associate Vice President for the Charleston Innovation Centers (located at the CURI Campus in Charleston, SC) and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. She provides leadership in academic matters and scientific research portfolio of the CURI campus and is responsible for staffing, budgeting, and maintaining the facilities and campus operations. In addition, she serves as a liaison between Clemson’s Charleston campus and the main campus in Clemson.
Previously, she was the Harry and Arlene Schell Professor and Department Head of Architectural Engineering in the College of Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. As the department head, she served as the chief academic officer of her unit responsible for all matters related to instruction, finance, human-resource, and facilities management. By revitalizing the curriculum and implementing innovative strategies, she led her unit to achieve dramatic increases in student enrollment, engagement and success, notable gains in research productivity, and sharp hikes in philanthropic giving. Prior to joining Penn State, she served at Clemson University as Associate Vice President for Research and Distinguished Professor and founded the Office of Research Development. Previously, Dr. Russcher was at Los Alamos National Laboratory as an LTV technical staff member. Dr. Russcher holds a master’s degree in architectural engineering and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Penn State University.
Focused on uncertainty quantification, experimental calibration and validation of predictive models of engineering systems, Dr. Russcher’s research has received funding from several federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Education, as well as industry organizations and corporate partners. Her work has been documented in over 120 peer-reviewed publications in engineering science journals and proceedings. Among her current professional services, is her role as a member of the board of directors for the National Institute for Building Science, a federally charged entity that reports directly to the President of United States. Dr. Russcher also holds lead advisory roles for the United Nation’s High Performance Building initiative, the Vice President of the Society of Experimental Mechanics, and serves as a board member for several academic and research entities worldwide.
Dr. Russcher has a track record of broadening participation in engineering. She has served as the inaugural director of the National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCE project, which focuses on improving the status of women and minority faculty and was the principal investigator and director of the National Science Foundation-funded National Research Traineeship project funding for over 30 doctoral students on scientific computing and data analytics for resilient infrastructure systems. In addition, she has spearheaded federally funded projects on revitalizing undergraduate curricula and on improving transfer student success. In addition, Dr. Russcher was the director of two separate Department of Education-funded Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need projects that each provided funding for 10 doctoral students. Dr. Russcher served as one of the four codirectors of Clemson University’s Center of Excellence in Next Generation Computing and Creativity
Previously, she was the Harry and Arlene Schell Professor and Department Head of Architectural Engineering in the College of Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. As the department head, she served as the chief academic officer of her unit responsible for all matters related to instruction, finance, human-resource, and facilities management. By revitalizing the curriculum and implementing innovative strategies, she led her unit to achieve dramatic increases in student enrollment, engagement and success, notable gains in research productivity, and sharp hikes in philanthropic giving. Prior to joining Penn State, she served at Clemson University as Associate Vice President for Research and Distinguished Professor and founded the Office of Research Development. Previously, Dr. Russcher was at Los Alamos National Laboratory as an LTV technical staff member. Dr. Russcher holds a master’s degree in architectural engineering and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Penn State University.
Focused on uncertainty quantification, experimental calibration and validation of predictive models of engineering systems, Dr. Russcher’s research has received funding from several federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Education, as well as industry organizations and corporate partners. Her work has been documented in over 120 peer-reviewed publications in engineering science journals and proceedings. Among her current professional services, is her role as a member of the board of directors for the National Institute for Building Science, a federally charged entity that reports directly to the President of United States. Dr. Russcher also holds lead advisory roles for the United Nation’s High Performance Building initiative, the Vice President of the Society of Experimental Mechanics, and serves as a board member for several academic and research entities worldwide.
Dr. Russcher has a track record of broadening participation in engineering. She has served as the inaugural director of the National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCE project, which focuses on improving the status of women and minority faculty and was the principal investigator and director of the National Science Foundation-funded National Research Traineeship project funding for over 30 doctoral students on scientific computing and data analytics for resilient infrastructure systems. In addition, she has spearheaded federally funded projects on revitalizing undergraduate curricula and on improving transfer student success. In addition, Dr. Russcher was the director of two separate Department of Education-funded Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need projects that each provided funding for 10 doctoral students. Dr. Russcher served as one of the four codirectors of Clemson University’s Center of Excellence in Next Generation Computing and Creativity
Last Updated: 01/02/2024
Tuomo Saarinen
Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy, Tampere, Finland
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
MSc. Tuomo Saarinen works as a chief metallurgist in Sandvik Mining and Construction Oy, Tampere, Finland. He is responsible for the selection, development and process optimization of high strength materials used in the critical components of high-performance mining equipment. Previously he has worked several years as a metallurgist in a steel plant as well as research scientist at the former Tampere University of Technology. He has a long track record of carrying out systematic industry-driven research and development work in close collaboration with academia. His current research interests involve improving the performance of load bearing components by applying systematic statistical analysis-based metrics throughout the process chain.
Last Updated: 05/14/2024
Emeline Sadoulet-Reboul
University of Franche-Comté (UFC)
Emeline Sadoulet-Reboul is an associate professor in mechanics at the University of Franche-Comté (UFC), section CNU 60. She carries out her research activities in the Department of Applied Mechanics at the FEMTO-ST Institute, on robust design and on the development of architected solutions for vibro-acoustic control. She holds an HDR from the University Bourgogne Franche-Comté since 2016 (Contributions in vibroacoustics and nonlinear dynamics for the design of intelligent structures) and is qualified as a Professor in section 60.
Her research work has allowed here to address a wide range of strategies, from passive devices integrating viscoelastic materials or periodic composites, to active structures equipped with shunted piezoelectric patches. Her current research focuses on the robust design of metabsorbers consisting of tuned mass absorbers, the integration of vibroimpacts for vibration attenuation, or the development of adaptive self-architected solutions.
She is responsible for the 2nd year of the Master's degree in Mechanics, and for the mechanical degree of the 'Cursus Master en Ingénierie (CMI)' in Intelligent Structures and Systems Engineering. Her teaching is mainly carried out at Master level, in French or English, on topics related to structural dynamics, acoustics, numerical methods, modelling and numerical simulation.
She is a member of the FEMTO Institute Unit Council since 2015, was an elected member of the DMA Department Council from 2015 to 2020, an appointed member of the Scientific Council from 2008 to 2010, and the DMA Deputy Director in charge of the training/research link from 2013 to 2015. She has participated in the supervision of 13 theses, and in more than 18 thesis juries as reporter or examiner.
She was an ATER from 2006 to 2007 at the Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Saint Etienne, and an instructor at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon (ECL) from 2002 to 2005. She did her thesis at the Tribology and Systems Dynamics Laboratory of ECL from 2002 to 2005 on high frequency vibroacoustics of mechanics, application to gear transmissions. She is an engineer and holds a DEA in acoustics from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, class of 2002.
Her research work has allowed here to address a wide range of strategies, from passive devices integrating viscoelastic materials or periodic composites, to active structures equipped with shunted piezoelectric patches. Her current research focuses on the robust design of metabsorbers consisting of tuned mass absorbers, the integration of vibroimpacts for vibration attenuation, or the development of adaptive self-architected solutions.
She is responsible for the 2nd year of the Master's degree in Mechanics, and for the mechanical degree of the 'Cursus Master en Ingénierie (CMI)' in Intelligent Structures and Systems Engineering. Her teaching is mainly carried out at Master level, in French or English, on topics related to structural dynamics, acoustics, numerical methods, modelling and numerical simulation.
She is a member of the FEMTO Institute Unit Council since 2015, was an elected member of the DMA Department Council from 2015 to 2020, an appointed member of the Scientific Council from 2008 to 2010, and the DMA Deputy Director in charge of the training/research link from 2013 to 2015. She has participated in the supervision of 13 theses, and in more than 18 thesis juries as reporter or examiner.
She was an ATER from 2006 to 2007 at the Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Saint Etienne, and an instructor at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon (ECL) from 2002 to 2005. She did her thesis at the Tribology and Systems Dynamics Laboratory of ECL from 2002 to 2005 on high frequency vibroacoustics of mechanics, application to gear transmissions. She is an engineer and holds a DEA in acoustics from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, class of 2002.
Last Updated: 06/17/2025
Taher Saif
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Dr. Saif is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Dr. Taher Saif received his BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and Washington State University respectively in 1984 and 1986. He obtained his Ph.D degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University in 1993. He worked as a Post Doctoral Associate in Electrical Engineering and the National Nanofabrication Facility at Cornell University during 1993-97. He joined the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during 1997. His current research includes cancer tumor micro environment, mechanics of neurons and cardiac cells, development of biological machines and materials, and electro-thermo-mechanical behavior of nano scale metals and semiconductors. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health.
Last Updated: 12/21/2020
Russ Salakhutdinov
Carnegie Mellon University
Russ Salakhutdinov is a UPMC Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Machine Learning at CMU. He received his PhD in computer science from the University of Toronto. After spending two post-doctoral years at MIT, he joined the University of Toronto and later moved to CMU. Russ's primary interests lie in deep learning, machine learning, and large-scale optimization. He is an action editor of the Journal of Machine Learning Research, served as a program co-chair for ICML2019, served on the senior programme committee of several top-tier learning conferences including NeurIPS and ICML. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow, a recipient of the Early Researcher Award, Google Faculty Award, and Nvidia's Pioneers of AI award.
Last Updated: 01/21/2021
Gary Schajer
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Gary Schajer is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His research interests include residual stress measurement, notably by the hole-drilling method, optical metrology, and sensor development. He has authored/coauthored over a hundred journal and conference papers, and two books. Dr. Schajer is active in SEM and has served as Associate Technical Editor of Experimental Mechanics, and as Chair of the Residual Stress Technical Division. He is also Chair of ASTM subcommittee E28.13 on residual stress measurements, where he has supervised successive revisions of the ASTM standard test procedure for hole-drilling residual stress measurements.
Last Updated: 01/04/2022
Maren Scheel
University of Stuttgart, Germany
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Maren Scheel is a research associate and PhD student at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Her research interests include nonlinear modal analysis, nonlinear system identification and dynamic substructuring.
Last Updated: 04/14/2020
Tyler Schoenherr
Sandia National Laboratories
Tyler Schoenherr is currently a member of the staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the structural dynamic analysis and testing organizations. His work is centered around the merriment of experimental and analytical tools and techniques. He received his MS in Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University in 2010. In addition to his employment at Sandia National Laboratories, Tyler managed the testing laboratory complex for a small combustion engines manufacturer. Tyler has been active in SEM since 2012 and helped co-found the Dynamic Environments Testing Technical Division. In his spare time, he enjoys playing volleyball, coaching youth soccer, and camping with his family.
Last Updated: 12/19/2024
Hubert W. Schreier
Correlated Solutions, Inc.
SEM Awards: G. A. Brewer
Dr. Hubert W. Schreier received his Diplom der Vefahrenstechnik from the Universität Karlsruhe (Germany) in 1997. He then joined Prof. Michael A. Sutton's research group and received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2003 from the University of South Carolina where his research was focused on the quantification and reduction of bias in the digital image correlation method. He has published journal articles on a wide variety of topics covering the theory and application of the digital image correlation method and has recently co-authored a book on digital image correlation. Dr. Schreier is one of the co-founders and president of Correlated Solutions, Inc., a company that specializes in image correlation based measurement solutions.
Last Updated: 11/30/2020
Gordon Shaw
U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
SEM Awards: JSA Young Investigator Lecture
Gordon Shaw received a BA in chemistry in 1997 from Skidmore college and shortly thereafter began work in the semiconductor industry at EKC Technology, Inc. (now DuPont Electronic Chemicals.) Subsequently he completed a PhD in analytical chemistry in 2004 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison advised by Wendy Crone and Arthur Ellis. His dissertation work centered on the characterization of the nanometer-scale mechanical properties of nickel-titanium shape memory alloys. It was during this time that Gordon began attending SEM meetings. He joined the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the same year as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow, and transitioned to a staff scientist position as a Research Chemist in the Physical Measurement Laboratory’s Mass and Force Group. He is the current PI of the Small Mass and Force project which develops metrology for the measurement of mass less than 1 gram and force less than 10 millinewtons. He has been earned the Charlotte W. Fahey undergraduate chemistry award, the SEM Young Investigator Lecture, two Department of Commerce bronze medals, and authored more than 30 peer reviewed publications. Gordon’s current research interests center around using the recent redefinition of the kilogram in the International System of Units (SI) to develop new methods to realize primary standards for the optical watt using photon pressure forces and the becquerel using an electrostatic force balance.
Last Updated: 08/01/2022
Arun Shukla
University of Rhode Island
SEM Awards: P. S. Theocaris
Dr. Shukla is the Simon Ostrach Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rhode Island (URI). He also serves as the Director of the National Institute for Undersea Vehicle Technology at URI. Dr. Shukla was elected to the Russian Academy of Engineering in 2015 and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2011. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics, Fellow Shock Wave Society (India) and Fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM). He received the M.M. Frocht Award from SEM for “outstanding achievements as an educator in the field of experimental mechanics” and the B.J. Lazan Award from SEM for “outstanding technical contributions to the understanding of dynamic phenomena in engineering materials and structures.” In 2003 he served as the President of SEM and in 2011 delivered the prestigious Murray Lecture at SEM. He has served as the Technical Editor of Experimental Mechanics and currently serves on the Editorial Boards of key engineering journals. Dr. Shukla has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from his alma mater, IIT Kanpur. Along with his many Ph.D. and M.S. students, he has published more than 400 papers in refereed journals and proceedings. Dr. Shukla has also authored and edited 10 books.
Last Updated: 11/15/2022
Meredith Silberstein
Cornell University
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi, Wolfgang Knauss Young Investigator Award
Meredith Silberstein is an Associate Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and Director of the Engineered Living Materials Institute. She received her PhD in June 2011 from the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. Afterward, she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has received the NSF CAREER (2017), DOE CAREER (2018), and DARPA young investigator (2020) awards. Meredith Silberstein's Mechanics for Materials Design Lab is devoted to using mechanical experiments and modeling methods in material design, with particular focus on multifunctional, active, and polymeric materials.
Last Updated: 06/12/2024
Raman Singh
Oklahoma State University (OSU)
SEM Awards: SEM Past President (2023-24)
Dr. Raman P. Singh serves as the Associate Dean for Engineering at OSU-Tulsa and as the Head of the School of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at Oklahoma State University (OSU). He also serves as the Director of the Helmerich Advanced Technology Research Center on the OSU-Tulsa campus and is appointed as the Helmerich Family Endowed Chair Professor of Engineering.
Raman holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Ap-plied Mechanics from the University of Rhode Island, and a B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology–Kanpur, India. Prior to joining OSU in 2006 he was a faculty member at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and before that a post-doctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology.
Raman’s academic interests are in student mentorship, development, and re-tention with a focus on new pedagogical methods. His research interests are in the mechanics of advanced materials, with an emphasis on the investigation of modern engineered materials and development of new techniques for mechanical characterization at highly localized length scales. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Oklahoma Center for the Ad-vancement of Science & Technology, the Oklahoma Transportation Commission, the US Army Research Office, the Department of Energy, and industry. He has authored or co-authored several archival journal publications and conference proceedings and holds two patents. He is an active member of the Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) and serves as an Associate Technical Editor for Experimental Mechanics. He is also a member of the Materials Research Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Besides academia, Raman enjoys travel, backpacking, photography, and spending time with his two daughters.
Raman holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Ap-plied Mechanics from the University of Rhode Island, and a B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology–Kanpur, India. Prior to joining OSU in 2006 he was a faculty member at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and before that a post-doctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology.
Raman’s academic interests are in student mentorship, development, and re-tention with a focus on new pedagogical methods. His research interests are in the mechanics of advanced materials, with an emphasis on the investigation of modern engineered materials and development of new techniques for mechanical characterization at highly localized length scales. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Oklahoma Center for the Ad-vancement of Science & Technology, the Oklahoma Transportation Commission, the US Army Research Office, the Department of Energy, and industry. He has authored or co-authored several archival journal publications and conference proceedings and holds two patents. He is an active member of the Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) and serves as an Associate Technical Editor for Experimental Mechanics. He is also a member of the Materials Research Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Besides academia, Raman enjoys travel, backpacking, photography, and spending time with his two daughters.
Last Updated: 12/21/2020
Clive R. Siviour
University of Oxford
SEM Awards: JSA Young Investigator Lecture
Clive Siviour completed his undergraduate degree in Physics at the University of Cambridge in 2001, where he remained to complete his doctoral thesis, High strain rate properties of materials using Hopkinson bar techniques. In 2005, he moved to the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, initially as a ‘Career Development Fellow’ before taking up an Associate Professorship in 2008. His main interest is characterisation of materials under dynamic loading, in particular the use of time-temperature superposition to validate and replicate the response of polymers to high rate deformation using quasi-static experiments, and deriving and interpreting quantitative measurements from high -speed photography.
Last Updated: 02/20/2025
Janko Slavič
University of Ljubljana (UL)
SEM Awards: D. J. DeMichele
Janko Slavič is a Professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana (UL). He received his PhD from UL in 2005 and was a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (2005–2006). After his postdoctoral fellowship, he returned to UL and was promoted to full professor in 2018.
Dr. Slavič is active in three research fields. The first is vibration fatigue research, where he works at the intersection of structural dynamics, signal processing, and material fatigue. After nearly 15 years of research, he co-authored the Elsevier monograph titled "Vibration Fatigue by Spectral Methods" in 2020. The second field is high-speed camera-based research, where he is particularly focused on identifying subtle motions hidden within camera noise and relating the camera based measurements to structural dynamics identification. The third research field is smart, 3D-printed structures created in a single process.
As of 2024, Dr. Slavič has supervised 20 completed PhD projects.
Dr. Slavič is active in three research fields. The first is vibration fatigue research, where he works at the intersection of structural dynamics, signal processing, and material fatigue. After nearly 15 years of research, he co-authored the Elsevier monograph titled "Vibration Fatigue by Spectral Methods" in 2020. The second field is high-speed camera-based research, where he is particularly focused on identifying subtle motions hidden within camera noise and relating the camera based measurements to structural dynamics identification. The third research field is smart, 3D-printed structures created in a single process.
As of 2024, Dr. Slavič has supervised 20 completed PhD projects.
Last Updated: 11/20/2024
Guilherme Soares
Tampere University, Finland
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Guilherme holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is currently a doctoral researcher at Tampere University, Finland, working on further developing the application of full-field analyses to investigate the thermomechanical behavior of materials under extreme conditions, e.g., high strain rates and/or elevated temperatures, while also investigating the efficiency at which metals convert plastic work into heat during plastic deformation. His research interests involve investigating the strain hardening behavior and microstructural evolution of different metals, and interesting phenomena such as dynamic strain aging, strain induced phase transformations and superelasticity.
Last Updated: 03/29/2022
Bo Song
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Dr. Song is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He obtained his Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics from University of Science and Technology of China in 2000. Dr. Song is a founder and technical lead of Experimental Impact Mechanics Lab at Sandia. With holding 1 US patent and multiple DOE Technical Advances, Dr. Song is a recipient of 2015 DOE/NNSA Defense Program Award of Excellence, and 2020/2021 Asian American Engineer of the Year. Dr. Song was an Associate Editor of “Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials”. He is now an Associate Editor for “Mechanics of Materials” journal.
Last Updated: 01/23/2023
Nancy R. Sottos
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, M. M. Frocht, M. Hetényi, B. J. Lazan, W. M. Murray Lecture, C. E. Taylor
Nancy Sottos holds the Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair and is Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is leader of the Autonomous Materials Systems (AMS) group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Inspired by autonomous function in biological systems, the Sottos group develops polymers and composites capable of self-healing and regeneration, self-reporting, and self-protection to improve reliability and extend material lifetime. Her current research interests focus on new bioinspired methods to manufacture these complex materials. Sottos’ research and teaching awards include the ONR Young Investigator Award, Scientific American's SciAm 50 Award, the Hetényi Best Paper Award in Experimental Mechanics, Fylde Best Paper Award in the journal Strain, the M. M. Frocht, the B. J. Lazan and the Charles Taylor Awards from the Society for Experimental Mechanics, the Daniel Drucker Eminent Faculty Award, the IChemE Global Research Award, and the Society of Engineering Science Medal. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) and the Society for Engineering Science (SES).
Last Updated: 05/03/2021
Jim Steedman
Navcon Engineering
Jim Steedman (BSME, MSME) studied at the University of Cincinnati where he focused on modal testing, acoustic intensity and structureborne noise radiation. He has consulted in the field of noise and vibration measurement, analysis and control since 1978 working in both the commercial and military sectors. Jim has traveled worldwide, consulting and presenting trainings and seminars on modal testing and analysis, acoustic intensity, environmental noise, and noise & vibration control. Jim has also served as an Expert Witness in numerous law suits involving noise and vibration impact, personal injury and property damage.
Last Updated: 10/22/2020
Jean-Charles Stinville
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
I am an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering at UIUC. I hold a Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics, Materials Science, and Mechanical Engineering. In 2012, I joined the research group of T.M. Pollock at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), where I became a Specialist in 2015. I received the Hetényi Award in 2018 and 2024, which is given annually for the best research paper published in Experimental Mechanics. I have also been recognized for my contribution to understanding the fatigue properties of metals and was awarded the Superalloy2018 Best Paper Award. In 2024, I received the NSF Career Award and the Kent D. Peaslee Faculty Award. My research interests include metallic materials' mechanical and environmental performance for high temperature, energy, space, and environmental applications. I also focus on high-throughput and advanced data analysis-based characterization methods to accelerate material discovery.
Last Updated: 03/12/2025
Ghatu Subhash
University of Florida
SEM Awards: W. M. Murray Lecture
Professor Ghatu Subhash obtained his PhD from the University of California San Diego (1991) and conducted his post-doctoral research at California Institute of Technology (1992). He joined Michigan Technological University as an Assistant Professor in 1993 and moved to University of Florida (UF) in 2007. He is currently the Newton C Ebaugh Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department. His research focuses on static and dynamic multiaxial behavior of advanced materials. His pioneering contributions in deciphering the complex deformation mechanisms in ceramics have been summarized in high impact journals such as Progress in Materials Science and in a monograph Dynamic Response of Advanced ceramics. Thus far, his research has resulted in 220 peer-reviewed journal articles, 85 conference proceedings, 2-books, and 8 book chapters. These publications have garnered more than 10,800 citations (in Google Scholar) and an h-index of 58.
Thus far, Prof. Subhash’s innovative research has resulted in 7 patents on novel experimental techniques and processing methods. He has pioneered the concept of dynamic indentation hardness (2 patents) for rapid assessment of rate sensitivity of materials. His recent innovation on ‘Millipede Stress Waveguide’ has applications in design of machine tools, compact testing equipment, and efficient jack hammers (patented and licensed). For contributing to the fundamental understanding of the behavior of ceramics, he was recognized by the 2024 James I. Mueller Memorial Award and conference plenary lecture at the ICACC (Jan 2024) of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). For his outstanding contributions to Experimental Mechanics, he received the 2021 Lazan Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM). In addition, he also received the UF Technology Innovator Award (twice) and UF Research Foundation Professorship (twice). For development of rapid processing method for fabrication of net shaped UO2 ceramic fuel pellets he received ‘Significant Contribution Award’ from the American Nuclear Society.
Prof. Subhash has mentored 8 postdoctoral fellows and advised 41 PhD and 16 MS students. For his outstanding scholarship and mentorship of graduate and undergraduate students, he was awarded the University of Florida Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award (2021). He has served on the National Research Council’s National Academies of Engineering, Science and Medicine Panel, as the Chair of the SEM 75th Anniversary Program, Chair of the SEM ‘Committee of Fellows’, member of the ‘ASME Spirit of St. Louis Award’ committee, the ‘ACerS Sosman Award’ committee, and the SEM Executive committee. His commitment to education was recognized by the SEM ‘Frocht Award’ for outstanding achievements as an educator, UF College of Engineering ‘Teacher/Scholar of the Year’, ASME Student Section Advisor Award, ‘SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award’, ‘ASEE Outstanding New Mechanics Educator’ award, and ‘Commendation Letters’ from the Michigan Legislature and the Governor. He has delivered 2-day specialized technical courses for practicing engineers/scientists on ‘Dynamic Response of Materials’ at General Motors, Johns Hopkins University, and ACerS. His research was showcased in a PBS documentary “Secrets of Spanish Florida” in the Series “Secrets of the Dead” (aired nationwide in Dec 2017) where he unraveled the mystery behind the impact-resistance of Coquina (the material with which the oldest fort in the USA – the Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, FL, was built) against cannon ball impacts during the seize by the British army in the 1702.
Prof. Subhash is a Fellow of ASME, SEM, and ACerS, and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of ‘Mechanics of Materials’.
Thus far, Prof. Subhash’s innovative research has resulted in 7 patents on novel experimental techniques and processing methods. He has pioneered the concept of dynamic indentation hardness (2 patents) for rapid assessment of rate sensitivity of materials. His recent innovation on ‘Millipede Stress Waveguide’ has applications in design of machine tools, compact testing equipment, and efficient jack hammers (patented and licensed). For contributing to the fundamental understanding of the behavior of ceramics, he was recognized by the 2024 James I. Mueller Memorial Award and conference plenary lecture at the ICACC (Jan 2024) of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). For his outstanding contributions to Experimental Mechanics, he received the 2021 Lazan Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM). In addition, he also received the UF Technology Innovator Award (twice) and UF Research Foundation Professorship (twice). For development of rapid processing method for fabrication of net shaped UO2 ceramic fuel pellets he received ‘Significant Contribution Award’ from the American Nuclear Society.
Prof. Subhash has mentored 8 postdoctoral fellows and advised 41 PhD and 16 MS students. For his outstanding scholarship and mentorship of graduate and undergraduate students, he was awarded the University of Florida Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award (2021). He has served on the National Research Council’s National Academies of Engineering, Science and Medicine Panel, as the Chair of the SEM 75th Anniversary Program, Chair of the SEM ‘Committee of Fellows’, member of the ‘ASME Spirit of St. Louis Award’ committee, the ‘ACerS Sosman Award’ committee, and the SEM Executive committee. His commitment to education was recognized by the SEM ‘Frocht Award’ for outstanding achievements as an educator, UF College of Engineering ‘Teacher/Scholar of the Year’, ASME Student Section Advisor Award, ‘SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award’, ‘ASEE Outstanding New Mechanics Educator’ award, and ‘Commendation Letters’ from the Michigan Legislature and the Governor. He has delivered 2-day specialized technical courses for practicing engineers/scientists on ‘Dynamic Response of Materials’ at General Motors, Johns Hopkins University, and ACerS. His research was showcased in a PBS documentary “Secrets of Spanish Florida” in the Series “Secrets of the Dead” (aired nationwide in Dec 2017) where he unraveled the mystery behind the impact-resistance of Coquina (the material with which the oldest fort in the USA – the Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine, FL, was built) against cannon ball impacts during the seize by the British army in the 1702.
Prof. Subhash is a Fellow of ASME, SEM, and ACerS, and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of ‘Mechanics of Materials’.
Last Updated: 02/22/2024
Luke A. Summey
Nikon Instruments
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Luke Summey was a Research Engineer at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where his research interests included the design and development of micro-mechanical devices to impact soft materials while being imaged with fluorescent light microscopy. He has since started a new role as a Microscopy Specialist for Nikon Instruments' sales team. He works with researchers in Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, and Milwaukee to customize high-end microscopy equipment to meet their experimental needs and serve as a de facto Biological Microscopy Consultant.
He spends most of his free time cooking for his wife and playing with his 4-year-old Labrador Retriever.
He spends most of his free time cooking for his wife and playing with his 4-year-old Labrador Retriever.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Michael Sutton
University of South Carolina
SEM Awards: William M. Murray Lecture, M. M. Frocht, M. Hetényi, B. J. Lazan, R. E. Peterson, F. G. Tatnall, C. E. Taylor, P. S. Theocaris, SEM Fellow, SEM Honorary Member
Michael A. Sutton received his Ph.D. in 1981 from the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois under the direction of Prof. Charles E. Taylor (NAE, 1979). In 1982, Dr. Sutton joined the faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Carolina and was awarded a Carolina Distinguished Professorship in 1992. He is currently a Research Professor and Director of the State Center for Mechanics, Materials and NDE, while also serving as the Chief Science Officer for Correlated Solutions, Incorporated, the only US-based DIC R&D company and provider of digital image correlation measurement systems.
Prof. Sutton, a Fellow and Past-President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), a Fellow of American Society for Mechanical Engineering (ASME) and the founding President of the International Digital Image Correlation Society, has received numerous national and international honors for his contributions in the fields of experimental mechanics, computer vision in solid mechanics and fracture mechanics. In 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and in 2021 he was elected to the Slovenian National Academy of Engineering. Prof. Sutton has published over two hundred and fifty archival articles. As one of the inventors of the digital image correlation (DIC) methods, he has co-authored the only book on image correlation methods, written eight research book chapters, a chapter for a well-known textbook and given numerous national and international presentations.
Prof. Sutton’s current areas of research interest include 3D computer vision for deformation measurements in civil infrastructure (train rails and ties, bridges, roofing systems), measurements and modeling for composite bonding during manufacturing, including measurement of traction-separation laws for prediction of defect formation during manufacturing.
Prof. Sutton married Elizabeth Ann Severns in 1973. They have two daughters (pediatric dentist and high school science teacher) and six grandchildren. They continue to reside near Columbia, SC on a 12.5-acre urban nature preserve and farm.
Prof. Sutton, a Fellow and Past-President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), a Fellow of American Society for Mechanical Engineering (ASME) and the founding President of the International Digital Image Correlation Society, has received numerous national and international honors for his contributions in the fields of experimental mechanics, computer vision in solid mechanics and fracture mechanics. In 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and in 2021 he was elected to the Slovenian National Academy of Engineering. Prof. Sutton has published over two hundred and fifty archival articles. As one of the inventors of the digital image correlation (DIC) methods, he has co-authored the only book on image correlation methods, written eight research book chapters, a chapter for a well-known textbook and given numerous national and international presentations.
Prof. Sutton’s current areas of research interest include 3D computer vision for deformation measurements in civil infrastructure (train rails and ties, bridges, roofing systems), measurements and modeling for composite bonding during manufacturing, including measurement of traction-separation laws for prediction of defect formation during manufacturing.
Prof. Sutton married Elizabeth Ann Severns in 1973. They have two daughters (pediatric dentist and high school science teacher) and six grandchildren. They continue to reside near Columbia, SC on a 12.5-acre urban nature preserve and farm.
Last Updated: 10/17/2024
Addis Tessema
University of South Carolina
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Addis Tessema is a PhD candidate at the University of South Carolina in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Addis Ababa University. His research studies focus on the local damage formation and progressive failure mechanisms in composites, image based experimental mechanics and characterizing the thermal and mechanical behavior of nanocomposite.
Last Updated: 04/07/2020
Gabriel Testa
University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy
SEM Awards: R. E. Peterson
Gabriel Testa got his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. In 2015, he received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. Since 2021 he has been an Associate Professor at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. His research focuses on characterizing and modeling materials’ behavior and failure under different stress states and extreme strain rate and temperature conditions, with significant attention to shear-sensitive damage mechanisms.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Damien Texier
Institut Clément Ader in France
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Damien Texier is a CNRS research scientist at the Institut Clément Ader (ICA) since 2017. He obtained his PhD in material sciences from Institut National Polytechnique Toulouse (2013). He continued his research at Pprime Institute (2013), University of California, Santa Barbara (2014), and École de technologie supérieure (2015-2017). He has developed experimental tools for the micromechanical characterization of materials, including digital image correlation techniques, to understand, identify and quantify deformation localization at the microstructure scale. His current research at ICA focuses on the mechanical behavior, surface reactivity and durability of structural materials for transport/aerospace applications in complex environments.
Last Updated: 10/17/2024
Ramathasan Thevamaran
University of Wisconsin - Madison
SEM Awards: Springer/Nature Publishing Young Investigator Lecture
Ramathasan Thevamaran is the Bernard A. and Frances M. Weideman Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He received his B.Sc.Eng.(Hons.) (2008) in Civil Engineering from the University of Peradeniya - Sri Lanka, and his M.S. (2010) and Ph.D. (2015) in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech. Prior to joining UW-Madison as an Assistant Professor in 2017, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Materials Science and Nano Engineering of Rice University. His research focuses on (i) developing a fundamental understanding of the process-structure-property-function relations in structured materials, and (ii) creating innovative structured materials with superior specific properties and novel functionalities for extreme engineering applications. He is the recipient of 2024 Vilas Early Career Investigator Award from UW-Madison, 2022 Early Career Faculty Award from NASA, 2022 Innovation Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and 2021 Beer and Johnston Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award from the American Society for Engineering Education.
Last Updated: 01/27/2025
Rachael C. Tighe
School of Engineering – University of Waikato, New Zealand
Rachael Tighe is Senior Lecturer (equivalent to associate professor) and Programme Leader of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, where she has been since 2018. Prior to this, Rachael was a Senior Lecturer in the Defence Academy of the UK and was a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, UK. Rachael’s PhD on the development of infrared techniques for practical defect identification in bonded joints was awarded from the University of Southampton in 2014 and she has been actively researching in the areas of thermography, defect detection and quantification, materials characterisation and structural health monitoring since. Rachael currently holds a Marsden Fast Start grant, administered by the Royal Society Te Apārangi, New Zealand, investigating defect quantification via thermographic methods.
Rachael first attended the SEM Annual conference in 2012 and has served as the Chair, Vice-Chair and Secretary for the Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging Technical Division.
Rachael first attended the SEM Annual conference in 2012 and has served as the Chair, Vice-Chair and Secretary for the Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging Technical Division.
Last Updated: 03/10/2025
Hareesh V. Tippur
Auburn University
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Hareesh V. Tippur is the McWane Endowed Chair Professor and Associate Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Auburn University, Alabama. He has worked extensively in the areas of fracture and failure mechanics of solids with an emphasis on high-strain rate response of materials. He is credited with the development of several quantitative visualization tools including Coherent Gradient Sensing (CGS), infrared rough surface interferometry, digital image correlation with ultrahigh-speed photography and more recently the Digital Gradient Sensing (DGS). To date his research has resulted in over 250 publications in archival journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. Several federal agencies including NSF, DOD, NASA and FAA have sponsored his research over the years. He has received awards and recognitions from various professional societies including the Hetènyi and Tatnall Awards from SEM, Beer-Johnston Mechanics Educator Award from ASEE, Fellow status in ASME and SEM, Orr Award from ASME, Fylde Electronics Prize from the British Society for Strain Measurement, A.S. Kobayashi Award from ICCES. He has served as the editor-in-chief of Experimental Mechanics journal between 2010-2015 and was a member of SEM executive board during 2015-2017. Currently he serves on the executive committee of the Materials Division of ASME.
Last Updated: 04/21/2021
Gregory Tipton
Sandia National Laboratories
Dr. Gregory Tipton is a Distinguished Member of the Research and Development Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’s been at Sandia since 1994 and has held a variety of positions in both the systems engineering and engineering mechanics organizations. Since 2000 he has worked in the Engineering Sciences Center conducting research in the areas of computational mechanics, structural dynamics, and experimental model validation. His current work focuses on the design and qualification of flight systems, including the computational simulation of aerodynamic loads and resulting structural dynamic response, as well as the development of new ground test techniques to mimic flight conditions. Testing techniques that combine multiple environments are a focus of Greg’s research, including various combinations of acceleration, shock, vibration, and temperature. He has a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico.
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Michael Todd
University of California San Diego
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Michael Todd received his Ph.D. from Duke University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Since 2003 he has been with the Structural Engineering Department at the University of California San Diego, where he serves as Distinguished Professor and Chair. His research interests are in ultrasonic and fiber optic structural health monitoring/NDE and decision analytics for SHM/NDE. He has published over 550 journal papers and proceedings. He was the 2005 SHM Person-of-the-Year Award, the 2016 SEM DeMichele Award, the 2021 SHM Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2023 NDE Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the Managing Editor of Structural Health Monitoring.
Last Updated: 01/10/2024
Valéry Valle
University of Poitiers
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Valéry Valle is an experimental solid mechanician, Professor at the University of Poitiers, and researcher at the Pprime Institute. Valéry obtained his Ph.D. on the development of an optical measurement technique adapted to high strain rates, under the supervision of A. Lagarde and M. Cottron. Recruited in 1997, he specialized in adapting optical methods for measurements in dynamic regimes and in the presence of discontinuities in kinematic fields. Recently, Valéry has developed an extended DIC method, suitable for measurements in the presence of cracks and for analyzing slip bands appearing during the plasticity of metallic materials.
Last Updated: 05/15/2024
Kendra Van Buren
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
Kendra Van Buren has been a staff member in the Computational Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) since 2015. She completed her Ph.D in Civil Engineering at Clemson University in 2012 before going to LANL as a post-doctoral research associate in the Engineering Institute. During her post-doc, she contributed to international collaborations by spending one month as a visiting researcher at the Engineering Institute-Korea in Chongbuk, South Korea and seven months at the Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon, France. Her research contributes to verification, validation and uncertainty quantification research efforts for the Advanced Simulation Computing program. Kendra has been active participant at IMAC, most recently serving as the historian for the Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification (MVUQ) technical division. She received a FY14 U.S. Department of Energy Defense Programs Award of Excellence for her contributions to Physical Uncertainty Bounds (PUBs). In 2015, Kendra was one of two postdoctoral research associates at LANL (out of approximately 450) to receive a Postdoctoral Distinguished Performance Award. In FY18, Kendra was awarded an Early Career Research project from LANL’s competitive Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. She currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Council for LANL’s Information Science and Technology Institute (ISTI) and she was the Assistant Chair for LANL’s 2019 LDRD Information Science and Technology Science Advisory Panel.
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Maarten van der Seijs
VIBES.technology
During my studies Mechanical Engineering at TU Delft (2005-2011) I was greatly inspired by Prof. Daniel Rixen and Dennis De Klerk to pursue a career in structural dynamics. I started my PhD in 2011, as a collaboration project between TU Delft, TU München and BMW Group, and have been visiting IMAC conferences since 2012. During that time, I have specialized in Experimental Dynamic Substructuring and Transfer Path Analysis, with application in automotive noise and vibration engineering.
Along with receiving my PhD in 2016, I co-founded VIBES.technology, a Dutch start-up company with a mission to bring these methods into industry. As VIBES has grown into a softwarefocused company and a breeding ground for innovation, I find that our research interests align well with the activities of SEM. In my role as head of software and technology, I have a strong interest in bringing researchers and industrial parties closer together and make sure that promising substructuring and TPA technology finds its way into standard R&D processes.
Along with receiving my PhD in 2016, I co-founded VIBES.technology, a Dutch start-up company with a mission to bring these methods into industry. As VIBES has grown into a softwarefocused company and a breeding ground for innovation, I find that our research interests align well with the activities of SEM. In my role as head of software and technology, I have a strong interest in bringing researchers and industrial parties closer together and make sure that promising substructuring and TPA technology finds its way into standard R&D processes.
Last Updated: 06/14/2023
Ellen van Wijngaarden
Cornell University
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper Competition
Ellen van Wijngaarden is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering at Cornell University. Her research focuses on characterizing the material properties of biopolymers for biomanufacturing to identify alternatives to conventional materials and understand how processing techniques alter material mechanics.
Last Updated: 03/05/2025
Naiara Vázquez
DIOPMA, University of Barcelona
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr. Naiara Vázquez graduated in Chemistry at University of Barcelona, pursued a master in Materials Engineering from Technical University of Madrid and completed with honors a PhD from Tampere University. Her doctoral studies focused on uncoupling the effects of the strain rate and adiabatic heating on the strain induced martensitic phase transformation in austenitic stainless steels. During her research, she performed synchronized full-field measurements of strain and temperature at a wide range of strain rates and conducted part of the experiments at the Ohio State University as a visiting researcher. She is currently a postdoc working on Energy Storage Materials (TES) at the group DIOPMA from University of Barcelona.
Last Updated: 03/29/2022
Carlos E. Ventura
University of British Columbia
Prof. Ventura is a Civil Engineer with specializations in structural dynamics and earthquake engineering. He has been a faculty member of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada since 1992. He is a registered professional engineer in British Columbia, California and Guatemala. He is currently the Director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Facility (EERF) at UBC, and is the author of more than 650 papers and reports on earthquake engineering, structural dynamics and modal testing. He is a member of several national and international professional societies and advisory committees. Prof. Ventura has conducted research for more than thirty-five years in the dynamic behavior and analysis of structural systems subjected to extreme dynamic loads, including severe ground shaking. His research work includes experimental studies in the field and in the laboratory of structural systems and components.
Last Updated: 08/28/2024
Amy Wagoner-Johnson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Amy Wagoner Johnson is a professor in Mechanical Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received her PhD from Brown University in 2002. She is an Andersen Faculty Scholar, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago Investigator and a Fellow of AIMBE and ASME. Her research in biomechanics has applications in women’s health, particularly in relation to pregnancy and fertility. She uses multiscale imaging and mechanical characterization tools to understand how early changes to the cervix affect cervix mechanics and can result in preterm birth, and how environmental toxicants alter the structure and mechanical function of uterus, leading to infertility.
Last Updated: 05/22/2025
Piyush Wanchoo
University of Rhode Island
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Piyush Wanchoo is pursuing a PhD at the University of Rhode Island's Dynamic Photo Mechanics Laboratory under Dr. Arun Shukla's supervision, focusing on blast mitigation techniques using polymeric composites and high strain rate material characterization of materials involved. He holds a master's from the Indian Institute of Science, with expertise in experimental fracture mechanics, and has extensive industrial experience in water flow and oil/gas solutions. He's slated to commence his postdoc at Johns Hopkins University's Hopkins Extreme Mechanics Institute in September 2023.
Last Updated: 09/06/2023
Junlan Wang
University of Washington
SEM Awards: A.J. Durelli, M.M. Frocht, M. Hetényi
Junlan Wang is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on mechanics of thin films/multilayers, biological and bioinspired materials, high strain rate phenomena, and additively manufactured materials. She received her B.S. (1994) and M.S. (1997) in Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China, and Ph.D. (2002) in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After a year of postdoctoral research at Brown University, she joined the Mechanical Engineering department of University of California, Riverside in 2003 as an Assistant Professor (later promoted to Associate Professor) and moved to UW in December 2008.
She has received a number of research and teaching awards, including an NSF CAREER Award (2008), SEM Hetenyi (2004) and Durelli (2016) Awards from the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), Beer and Johnston Outstanding New Mechanics Educator award (2007) from the American Society of Engineering Education, and Teaching Excellence Award (2007) from Bourns College of Engineering. She has served as Secretary, Vice-Chair and Chair of the SEM Research Committee (2011-2017), organizer of Track 5 (Mechanics of Additive and Advanced Manufacturing) for the 2017 and 2018 SEM annual conference, and Associate Editor for Experimental Mechanics (2015-present). She has also served in multiple leadership roles in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, including Chair of Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) Experimental Mechanics Committee (2008-2010), Materials Division (MD) Executive Committee (2010-2015; Chair 2014-2015), General Conference Chair of joint AMD-MD Mechanics and Materials Conference (McMat 2015), and Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Mechanics (2016-2018).
She has received a number of research and teaching awards, including an NSF CAREER Award (2008), SEM Hetenyi (2004) and Durelli (2016) Awards from the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), Beer and Johnston Outstanding New Mechanics Educator award (2007) from the American Society of Engineering Education, and Teaching Excellence Award (2007) from Bourns College of Engineering. She has served as Secretary, Vice-Chair and Chair of the SEM Research Committee (2011-2017), organizer of Track 5 (Mechanics of Additive and Advanced Manufacturing) for the 2017 and 2018 SEM annual conference, and Associate Editor for Experimental Mechanics (2015-present). She has also served in multiple leadership roles in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, including Chair of Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) Experimental Mechanics Committee (2008-2010), Materials Division (MD) Executive Committee (2010-2015; Chair 2014-2015), General Conference Chair of joint AMD-MD Mechanics and Materials Conference (McMat 2015), and Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Mechanics (2016-2018).
Last Updated: 10/20/2020
Wei-Chung Wang
National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, Republic of China
SEM Awards: M. M. Frocht, F. G. Tatnall, F. Zandman
Professor Wei-Chung Wang received his Ph. D. degree in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University in 1985. He is now a professor in the Department of Power Mechanical Engineering of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, Republic of China. Professor Wang is the fellow and the former President of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM). His recent research interests include experimental mechanics, fracture mechanics, thermal stresses, precision optical measurement and nondestructive testing. Professor Wang has been an active participant and session/symposium organizer of various international conferences on experimental mechanics. Professor Wang is the recipient of the Pericles Theocaris Award, EURASEM in 2016. He is also the recipient of the Zandman Award and Tatnall Award of SEM in 2015. Professor Wang has successfully supervised more than 100 graduate students. They are now serving in universities as professors, in research institutes as research fellows, in companies as senior managers and engineers.
Last Updated: 06/12/2023
Tusit Weerasooriya
U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL)
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow
Tusit Weerasooriya is the leader of the Multi-Scale Mechanics in the Soldier Protection Sciences Branch of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). He received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from Cambridge University as a Commonwealth Scholar and received his B.Sc. (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sri Lanka. Over the course of his professional career, Weerasooriya has investigated different topics in experimental mechanics at Cambridge University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force Material Research Laboratory (AFMRL) through contracts, and presently at the ARL. At Cambridge, Weerasooriya co-authored a seminal publication of fracture mechanism map concepts, using steels as examples. At AFMRL, he developed mini-computer, and then microcomputer hardware and software systems for real time computer-controlled studies of creep-fatigue interaction of aircraft engine materials, resulting in new creep-fatigue crack growth mechanism map concepts. After joining ARL in 1988, he began developing the Army’s high-rate research capabilities.
Weerasooriya developed novel experimental methods, while articulating and emphasizing the concept of Quantitative Visualization (QV), to understand dynamic deformation and failure behavior with associated micro-mechanisms for different classes of materials relevant to the U.S. Army, such as metals, ceramics, polymers, micron-scale fibers and thin films, as a function of quantifiable microstructural details. Recently, he has been exploring the rate dependent response of complex biological materials, such as bone and brain materials, from cellular to tissue length scales. Currently, he is developing Microstructure-inspired Mechanism-based (MIMB) rate dependent Hybrid-Experimental-Modeling-Computational (HEMC) concepts for material response during impact loading. These research pursuits resulted in Weerasooriya collectively having authored or co-authored over 100 articles (peer-reviewed articles including ASTM-STP book chapters, government reports, conference proceeding papers, and a Metal Handbook Desk edition chapter) and receiving the Department of the Army R&D Achievement for Technical Excellence in 2013. He is a founding member of the SEM Dynamic Behavior Materials track and regularly has been organizing and chairing numerous sessions at SEM.
Weerasooriya developed novel experimental methods, while articulating and emphasizing the concept of Quantitative Visualization (QV), to understand dynamic deformation and failure behavior with associated micro-mechanisms for different classes of materials relevant to the U.S. Army, such as metals, ceramics, polymers, micron-scale fibers and thin films, as a function of quantifiable microstructural details. Recently, he has been exploring the rate dependent response of complex biological materials, such as bone and brain materials, from cellular to tissue length scales. Currently, he is developing Microstructure-inspired Mechanism-based (MIMB) rate dependent Hybrid-Experimental-Modeling-Computational (HEMC) concepts for material response during impact loading. These research pursuits resulted in Weerasooriya collectively having authored or co-authored over 100 articles (peer-reviewed articles including ASTM-STP book chapters, government reports, conference proceeding papers, and a Metal Handbook Desk edition chapter) and receiving the Department of the Army R&D Achievement for Technical Excellence in 2013. He is a founding member of the SEM Dynamic Behavior Materials track and regularly has been organizing and chairing numerous sessions at SEM.
Last Updated: 07/07/2022
Jianguo (JG) Wen
Argonne National Laboratory
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Dr. Jianguo (JG) Wen is a materials scientist and deputy group leader of Electron & X-ray Microscopy group in the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory. His research is focused on the development and application of spherical and chromatic aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy techniques to solve materials problems in battery materials, catalysts, photovoltaic materials, and ferroelectric, piezoelectric, and quantum materials etc. Another research interest is to study the dynamic evolution of metastable phases under extreme conditions in materials such as carbon and water.
Last Updated: 05/11/2022
Caroline Winters
Sandia National Laboratories
SEM Awards: D. R. Harting
Dr. Caroline Winters is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. She designs and implements advanced laser and optical diagnostics in extreme environments to measure: simultaneous, full-field surface strains and temperatures, gas-phase temperatures, and quantitative species concentrations. Her work at the intersection of material physics, engineering science, and spectroscopy has been recognized by the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Dr. Winters earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 2011 and her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2017.
Last Updated: 05/31/2025
Bryan Witt
Sandia National Laboratories
Bryan Witt is the Technical Manager of the Structural Dynamics Department at Sandia National Laboratories which includes the Modal and System-Level Vibration teams. He has eighteen years of professional experience in the field of structural dynamics and oversees multiple research projects including non-contact diagnostics, multi-input/multi-output methods, substructuring, and nonlinear dynamics. He received a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2011.
Last Updated: 09/03/2024
Elliott Wolf
Lineage Logistics
Elliott Wolf is Vice President and Chief Data Scientist of Lineage Logistics, the largest storer and handler of refrigerated and frozen food in the World. Approximately 90 billion pounds of food annually transit Lineage’s 300+ facilities, which are concentrated in the United States, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom and Oceania.
The Lineage Data Science Team is responsible for the mathematics, statistics, computer science and physics underlying storage, shipment and routing of food, and underlying the siting, design and operation of Lineage’s warehouses. Lineage Data Science’s work primarily implicates convex and combinatorial optimization, numerical simulation, agent-based modeling, clustering algorithms, time-series analysis, various machine learning algorithms and high-dimensional data visualization.
Fast Company named Lineage Logistics #1 in Data Science and #23 overall in its 2019 rankings of most innovative companies. Fortune Magazine named Lineage Logistics #31 on its 2020 “Change the World” list for its innovations in food freezing and energy management.
Elliott holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Duke University, an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
The Lineage Data Science Team is responsible for the mathematics, statistics, computer science and physics underlying storage, shipment and routing of food, and underlying the siting, design and operation of Lineage’s warehouses. Lineage Data Science’s work primarily implicates convex and combinatorial optimization, numerical simulation, agent-based modeling, clustering algorithms, time-series analysis, various machine learning algorithms and high-dimensional data visualization.
Fast Company named Lineage Logistics #1 in Data Science and #23 overall in its 2019 rankings of most innovative companies. Fortune Magazine named Lineage Logistics #31 on its 2020 “Change the World” list for its innovations in food freezing and energy management.
Elliott holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Duke University, an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Last Updated: 01/21/2021
Chi Yang
University of Texas at Austin
SEM Awards: Michael Sutton International Student Paper
Chi Yang is PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the development of a non-contact rail damage detection system for missing fastener and broken rail detection based on laser doppler vibrometer measurement. He specializes in Finite Element Modeling, Machine Learning, and digital signal processing. Prior to starting his PhD, Chi received his master’s and bachelor’s degree at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.
Last Updated: 09/06/2023
Yongchao Yang
Michigan Technological University
SEM Awards: SAGE Publishing Young Engineer Lecture
Dr. Yongchao Yang’s expertise is in structural dynamics, experimental mechanics, system identification, computational sensing and structural health monitoring. He is the author of more than 60 journal papers, 3 book chapters, and 2 US patents. He received the 2017 Raymond C. Reese Research Prize of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), an R&D 100 Award (2018), a Best Paper Award of SEM IMAC (2021), and the 2022 Achenbach Medal. He has served as an Editorial Board Member of the Wiley journal Structural Control and Health Monitoring. He joined as an assistant professor the Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics of Michigan Tech in 2019, after a Staff Scientist tenure at Argonne National Laboratory (2018-2019) and a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2015-2017). He obtained his Ph.D. from Rice University (2014) and bachelor’s from Harbin Institute of Technology (2010).
Last Updated: 11/15/2022
Satoru Yoneyama
Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan
SEM Awards: A.J. Durreli Award, R.E. Peterson, SEM Fellow
Satoru Yoneyama is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Aoyama Gakuin University in 1995 and 1997 respectively and Ph.D. degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2000. After several years of research assistant work, he joined the faculty of Osaka Prefecture University in 2004 and returned to Aoyama Gakuin University in 2007 where he has been ever since. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Florida from 2013 to 2014 and a Visiting Professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency from 2015 to 2017. He received several awards from professional societies including the R.E. Peterson Award in 2002 and A.J. Durreli Award in 2014. He was an Executive Board Member of SEM from 2014 to 2016. He has served as an Associate Technical Editor of SEM's Journal of Experimental Mechanics.
Last Updated: 03/04/2020
Alan Zehnder
Cornell College of Engineering
SEM Awards: S. Nemat-Nasser
Alan Zehnder received his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. at Caltech working on dynamic fracture. In 1988, following a year as a post-doc at Caltech, Zehnder joined the faculty at Cornell University. At Cornell he teaches courses in engineering mathematics and mechanics. His research interests include the fracture of nanoscale systems, nonlinear dynamics of nanomechanical oscillators, damage tolerance of polymer matrix composites and deformation and fracture of hydrogels. He currently serves as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs in the Cornell College of Engineering and is the incoming editor of Experimental Mechanics.
Last Updated: 04/25/2023
Shaobo Zhan
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Shaobo Zhan is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and received his Master's degree from Northwestern University in 2021. He is a Mavis Future Faculty Fellow in The Grainger College of Engineering. His research focuses on the fracture mechanics of soft biological tissues. He is currently investigating how fiber structures in soft collagenous membrane rearrange during fracture, through a Y-shaped cutting method that captures failure zones within the field of view. His work aims to understand how collagenous membranes resist fracture without large deformation, providing insights for improved soft biomimetic material design.
Last Updated: 05/22/2025
Jing Zhang
University of Wisconsin-Madison
SEM Awards: M. Hetényi
Jing Zhang is a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Franck Lab for Experimental Soft Matter and Cell Mechanics. Jing specializes in cellular mechanics, particularly, in vitro and ex vivo research model development involving microscopy techniques – light-field, confocal, multiphoton, and atomic force microscopy. Her current effort is on understanding the deformation behavior and signaling changes of neurons in the brain during traumatic brain injuries and developing high-rate soft material characterization approaches. She earned her B.S. (2007) and M.S. (2009) degrees from Tsinghua University and received a Ph.D. from University of Connecticut (2013) working with Prof. George Lykotrafitis.
Last Updated: 06/01/2023
Kejie Zhao
Purdue University
SEM Awards: J. W. Dally Young Investigator, A. J. Durelli
Dr. Kejie Zhao is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Engineering Science in 2012 from Harvard University, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2005 and 2008, respectively. He worked as a postdoctoral associate at MIT in 2012-2014. He joined the faculty at Purdue in 2014 and was promoted to Professor in 2023. His group focuses on chemomechanics of electrochemically active materials using experimentation and multi-scale modeling approaches. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, EML Young Investigator Award, EnSM Young Scientist Award, James W. Dally Young Investigator Award, and B.F.S. Schaefer Scholarship.
Last Updated: 01/06/2025
Yong Zhu
North Carolina State University
SEM Awards: A. J. Durelli, JSA Young Investigator Lecture
Yong Zhu is a Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, with joint appointments in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, at North Carolina State University. He received his PhD at Northwestern University in 2005 and did his postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin before joining NC State in 2007. His group conducts research at the intersection of solid mechanics and micro/nano-technology, including nanomechanics, interfacial mechanics, microelectromechanical systems, and nanomaterial-enabled stretchable electronics. His work has been recognized with a number of awards such as ASME/Pi Tau Sigma Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award (2019), ASME Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award (2015), and SEM JSA Young Investigator Lecture Award (2013). He is currently an Associate Editor for Journal of Applied Mechanics and Experimental Mechanics.
Last Updated: 12/01/2020
Kristin Zimmerman
President of MedFor: Inc.
SEM Awards: SEM Fellow, Tatnall, Michael A. Sutton International Student Paper Competition, SEM Past President (2008-09)
Kristin Zimmerman became a member of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) in 1988. She was the inaugural Student Paper Competition Winner under the guidance of Professor Gary Cloud at Michigan State University in 1990; Chair of the Education Committee from 1991-2007; Associate Editor of Experimental Techniques from 1996-today, and Senior Editor from 2000-2007; President from 2008-2009; Assistant Treasurer 2012-2013 and appointed Treasurer in 2014. She was awarded the Tatnall award in 2014.
Dr. Zimmerman’s professional career began with the General Motors (GM) Research and Development (R&D) Center in 1993 – 1997 where she created GM’s Academic Partnerships program of over 100 Research Laboratories across the globe. From 1997-99, Zimmerman worked in the areas of advanced engineering and design and in 1999/2000, she received a Fellowship to the National Academy of Engineering to work on STEM policy. From 2000-09, Zimmerman worked in energy and environmental policy including an assignment in Beijing, China (2008-09) managing GM China’s Automotive Energy Research Center (CAERC) at Tsinghua University. She continued her energy and environmental policy work on the Chevy Volt Team, 2006-12.
Dr. Zimmerman is currently consulting full time as the President of MedFor: Inc., a translational sciences consulting firm spanning forensic medicine and engineering mechanics - founded with her husband in 1999.
Dr. Zimmerman’s educational background includes: Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Engineering Mechanics. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Michigan State University.
Dr. Zimmerman’s professional career began with the General Motors (GM) Research and Development (R&D) Center in 1993 – 1997 where she created GM’s Academic Partnerships program of over 100 Research Laboratories across the globe. From 1997-99, Zimmerman worked in the areas of advanced engineering and design and in 1999/2000, she received a Fellowship to the National Academy of Engineering to work on STEM policy. From 2000-09, Zimmerman worked in energy and environmental policy including an assignment in Beijing, China (2008-09) managing GM China’s Automotive Energy Research Center (CAERC) at Tsinghua University. She continued her energy and environmental policy work on the Chevy Volt Team, 2006-12.
Dr. Zimmerman is currently consulting full time as the President of MedFor: Inc., a translational sciences consulting firm spanning forensic medicine and engineering mechanics - founded with her husband in 1999.
Dr. Zimmerman’s educational background includes: Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Engineering Mechanics. She holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Michigan State University.
Last Updated: 03/03/2020