2008
 Sergio
Pellegrino, Professor of Aeronautics has been
elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics for his notable contributions to the science
of aeronautics and astronautics. 1-31-08
 Professor Ares
Rosakis, Professor G.
Ravichandran,
and their student George
Lykotrafitis have been  awarded
the 2008 Hetenyi Award, named in honor of Dr. Miklos Hetenyi, for
the best research paper published in Experimental Mechanics. The
title of the paper is "Particle Velocimetry and Photoelasticity
Applied to the Study of Dynamic Sliding Along Frictionally-Held
Bimaterial Interfaces: Techniques and Feasibility" which
was published in 2006. Their award will be presented in a ceremony
at the awards luncheon at the SEM XI International Congress and
Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics scheduled to be
held in June 2008 in Orlando, Florida. 1-31-08
Caltech
has received an eight-year $24 million grant from the W. M. Keck
Foundation to establish the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies,
which will bring together scientists and engineers to develop new
space-mission concepts and technology. Read
more... 1-31-08
Professor Ares
Rosakis has been named the Astor Visiting Professor
and Lecturer at Oxford University, his alma matter. He is scheduled
to deliver the Astor Lecture at the Oxford University, Museum
Lecture Theatre on Friday, May 2, 2008. The title of his lecture
is Intersonic Earthquakes: What laboratory earthquakes
can teach us about real ones.
1-31-08
 Joseph
E. Shepherd has been named the C. L. "Kelly" Johnson
Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Shepherd is internationally recognized for his chosen specialities
of combustion, fuel properties, and fluid dynamics relevant
to explosion initiation and propagation. Congratulations! 1-9-08
2007
Full video presentation of the Fifty Years in Space Conference
held at Caltech is now available: click
here for details. 11-30-07
 Michael
Ortiz, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of
Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has won the first
Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics. The newly established
Prize, given every four years, is sponsored by Elsevier
Limited and awarded under the auspices of the International
Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM). Ortiz
is being recognized for a string of achievements over the
last decade including: physical modeling, mathematical
analysis and computational technique, including in particular
development of the quasi-continuum method for multiscale
modeling; formulation of new incremental variational methodology
for plastic deformation, with non-convex dissipation functions
leading naturally to the formation of dislocation sub-structures;
development of a three-dimensional, finite deformation
cohesive element model for simulation of fracture and fragmentation,
and associated development of symplectic integrators; and
novel exploitation of tools from algebraic topology in
the study of crystal lattices with defects. 12-10-07
Joe Shepherd received
the Numa Manson Medal "for fundamental contributions to
the understanding of explosion and detonation phenomena, application
of his knowledge to the resolution of practical explosion problems,
and for his mentoring of young researchers and fostering international
collaboration in the explosion community." The medal is
awarded by the Institute for Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive
Systems, which is the parent organization responsible for the
International Colloquium on Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive
Systems. The medal was presented at the Banquet of the 21st
Colloquium in Poitiers, France in July 2007; it is the organization's
highest honor, and Shepherd is the youngest person ever to
receive it. 11-9-07
 In
October, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) Council elected Paul
Dimotakis as a Fellow of AAAS. He will be recognized
for his many contributions to science and technology at the
Fellows Forum to be held on 16 February 2008 during the AAAS
Annual Meeting in Boston. 11-9-07
Ares
Rosakis received the 2007 D. R. Harting Award,
from the Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) for the "Best
Paper" published in Experimental Techniques. The title
of the paper is "Supershear and Sub-Rayleigh to Supershear
Transition Observed in Laboratory Earthquake Experiments".
Rosakis and his co-authors, Dr. Kaiwan Xia and Professor
Hiroo Kanamori received this award in June 2007 at the
SEM Annual Conference, Springfield, MA. 11-9-07
 In honor of the 50
Years in Space conference recently hosted
by GALCIT,
the Caltech
Archives has posted to its website the oral history
of Homer J. Stewart (1915-2007), a Caltech alumnus from
the early years of GALCIT (PhD 1940), and later a professor
of aeronautics and JPL staff member. Other online
oral histories related to Caltech's aeronautics program,
JPL, and space exploration include those of Terry Cole,
Norman H. Horowitz, Andrew P. Ingersoll, Arthur L. "Maj" Klein,
Paul B. MacCready, John R. Pierce, William H. Pickering,
Leon T. Silver, and James A. Westphal. 10-8-07
 Sergio
Pellegrino is joining
the Division as Professor of Aeronautics and Civil Engineering
on September 1st. His research areas include Design and
Analysis of Space Structure Systems, Intelligent Adaptive
Systems, and Evolutionary Optimization. 7-17-07
Sergio
Pellegrino, the father of ultra-lightweight expanding
space mirrors, has been elected to The
Royal Academy of Engineering. Professor Pellegrino
joins the Caltech faculty in September as Professor of Aeronautics
and Civil Engineering. "Our new Fellows demonstrate
the importance of engineering in the modern world," says
Academy President Lord Browne of Madingley. "They are
the cream of the UK's engineering talent and many of them
are actively involved in meeting some of the world's greatest
challenges: energy provision, climate change and sustainable
use of materials. We salute their achievements and invite
their help in moving engineering to the centre of society." 7-13-07
Professor Ares
Rosakis was
invited to give the Alwin Schaller Distinguished Lecture,
at the Mechanical Science and Engineering Department, University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, on May 1, 2007. The
title of his talk was "Laboratory Earthquakes". 6-22-07
Michael
Ortiz, the Dottyand
Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering,
has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences. 5-1-07
 New
from Caltech News: The
Life Aquatic with John
Dabiri - a profile of
Professor Dabiri and hisstunning work on vortex formation. 3-1-07
Former
GALCIT professor, Yuan-Cheng "Bert" Fung (PhD
'48) was awarded the
2007 Fritz
J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize by the National Academy of Engineering "for
the characterization and modeling of human tissue mechanics and function leading
to prevention and mitigation of trauma." Fung received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics
and Mathematics and joined the Aeronautics faculty in 1948. His early focus was
on structural dynamics and aerodynamics. 2-14-07
 Professor John
W. Hutchinson, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor
of Engineering, from the Division of Engineering and Applied
Sciences at Harvard University, delivered the 2007 GALCIT Kliegel
Lecture on January 19. Professor Hutchinson spoke on "Recent
Developments in Thin Film Mechanics." 1-25-07
Professor Ares
Rosakis has been invited to give the Mechanical
Engineering Distinguished Lecture at Stony Brook University,
New York, on Friday, January 26, 2007. The title of his
talk is "Laboratory Earthquakes." 1-9-07
2006
Professor Chiara
Daraio's dynamic studies of aligned forests
of  nanocoils
have revealed remarkable material properties that may lead
to applications in creating phononic crystals, delay lines,
and tunable acoustic wave guides. Her work in this area
began at UC San Diego with colleagues, and presently the
group is working on modeling the mechanism of formation
of these vertically aligned coiled nanotubes to provide
further insight on control for their larger scale fabrication
and potential technical applications. They report that
these mats of nanotubes add a nonlinear spring response
to their well known exceptional elastic stiffness and resilience
that makes them quite suitable for the creation of tunable
protecting layers for devices under impacts. More details
about this work can be found at the NanoWerk website. 11-28-06
Guruswami
Ravichandran, the John E. Goode, Jr. Professor of Aeronautics
and Mechanical Engineering, will receive an honorary degree,
Docteurs honoris causa (D.h.c) from the Paul Verlaine University,
Metz, France in recognition of his pioneering contributions to
the mechanical behavior of materials under extreme conditions
and for promoting international collaboration with researchers
at that University. He will be receiving this honor in a special
ceremony on October 10 at the Arsenal in Metz. 9-28-06
The
experimental visualization of three proposed types of earthquake
rupture, including
the "self-healing" pulse rupture, has for the first
time been achieved and demonstrated using ultrahigh-speed photography,
providing up to two million photographs per second, and dynamic
photoelasticity combined with laser vibrometry. The experimental
results of Professors Rosakis and Ravichandran,
with colleague and former GALCIT graduate student George Lykotrafitis,
reported and discussed recently in Science, could impact how
we respond to earthquakes and other disasters. Read more... 9-22-06
Michael
Ortiz, the Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of
Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, will give the Penner
Distinguished Lecture at UC San Diego on May 15. His topic
is Multiscale Modeling of Materials: A Challenge in Predictive
Science. 5-8-06
Translating
Engineering and Hard Science Skills into Business Success,
Dr. Alexis Livanos (President, Northrop Grumman Space Technology)
and Mr. Peter Kaufman (Chairman and CEO, Glenair) will describe
what they have learned about applying engineering and hard
science skills to leadership and team-building. October 17,
10:30 am, Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall. All welcome; lunch to follow. 11-20-06
The
experimental visualization
of three proposed types of earthquake rupture, including
the "self-healing" pulse rupture, has for the first
time been achieved and demonstrated using ultrahigh-speed
photography, providing up to two million photographs per
second, and dynamic photoelasticity combined with laser vibrometry.
The experimental results of Professors Rosakis and Ravichandran,
with colleague and former GALCIT graduate student George
Lykotrafitis, reported and discussed recently
in Science, could impact how we respond to earthquakes and
other disasters. Read
more... 9-22-06
Professor John
Dabiri's research
on jellyfish highlighted in the Pasadena Star News. "Jellyfish
are going to save the world in three different ways." 7-6-06
Michael
Ortiz, the Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics
and Mechanical Engineering, will give the Penner Distinguished
Lecture at UC San Diego on May 15. His topic is Multiscale
Modeling of Materials: A Challenge in Predictive Science. 5-8-06
Aerospace
engineers and  biologists solve
long-standing heart development mystery: embryonic heart
functions as a suction pump. 5-4-06
Beverley
McKeon has joined the Division as  Assistant
Professsor of Aeronautics. Her research areas include manipulation
of wall-bounded flows; physics and control of canonical flows;
smart morphing skins for flow control; and adaptive biomimetic
surfaces. 4-27-06
Dr.
Xue Feng has just received the National
Outstanding Dissertation Award in China for 2006. 4-13-06
CARDIAC
HEALTH
 Building
on years of research on the way that blood flows through
the heart valves, Mory
Gharib,
Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, and
his colleagues have devised
a new index for cardiac health based on a simple ultrasound
test. 4-10-06
Pierre
Clostermann, former GALCIT student (and  French
fighter pilot) passed away on March 22 at age 85. Read
more (pdf)... 4-10-06
Ares
Rosakis, Theodorevon
Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has
been named to the JPL Advisory Council. 3-9-06
Guruswami
Ravichandran, the Goode Jr. Professor of Aeronautics
and Mechanical Engineering has
been awarded one of the 30 program awards from the federal
Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. Ravichandran's
MURI is for "mechanics and mechanisms of impulse loading". 2-24-06
RESEARCH
FELLOWSHIPS
NSF
Graduate Research Fellowships have been awarded to Kakani
Young and JoHanna
Przybylowski. 4-03-06
Special
Seminar
Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - 100 Rock Auditorium (Broad)
3:00 pm
Cellular
and Molecular Nanomechanics and Human Disease States
Subra Suresh, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences
and Technology 2-21-06
GALCIT
- Northrop Grumman Technology Day
Friday, March 3, 2006, Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall
GALCIT has invited Northrop Grumman for a special one
day visit in which Caltech graduates, currently with
Northrop Grumman, will present selected research topics.
Click
for details... 2-10-06
NEW
APPOINTMENT
Dale
I. Pullin has been  appointed
the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics. 2-1-06
JPL
Paul
Dimotakis, John K. Northrop Professor of Aeronautics and
Professor of Applied Physics, has been appointed the Chief Technologist
of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1-12-06
elected
Fellow of the (AIMBE)
Mory Gharib, Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering,
has been elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical
and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in recognition of his many
distinguished contributions to the field as well as his involvement
with critical issues affecting medical and biological engineering.
2005
W.
M. Murray Medal
Ares
Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor
of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering and Director of GALCIT,
received the prestigious Society of Experimental Mechanics 2005
W. M. Murray Medal and deliverd the 2005 Murray Lecture. This
award was in recognition of his development and application of
advanced methods for accurate measurement of transient, dynamic
phenomena. The presentation took place on June 9th, 2005, during
the SEM Annual Conference and Exposition on Experimental and
Applied Mechanics held June 7-9, 2005 in Portland, Oregon.
The
American Association for the Advancement of Science has named
its  2005 Fellows, selected for their meritorious efforts to advance
science or its applications. Among this year's EAS recipients
are Mory
Gharib, Hans
W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and
Bioengineering, and Hans
G. Hornung, C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor
of Aeronautics, Emeritus.
NEW
APPOINTMENT
Guruswami
Ravichandran has been appointed the John E. Goode, Jr., Professor
of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering. Ravichandran is internationally
recognized for his research in mechanical behavior of materials,
particularly for his contributions in dynamic deformation and
failure, experimental mechanics and active materials. He is a
Fellow of the ASME and recently won the Lazan
Award of the Society
of Experimental Mechanics.
biomechanics researchers
in EAS have joined a global medical effort to address a number
of diseases through the innovative Global
Enterprise for Micromechanics and Molecular Medicine (GEM4).
Participation of Caltech researchers, including Professors Mory
Gharib, John Dabiri,
and Ares
Rosakis, will concentrate on the micromechanics of cells
and tissues related to certain diseases. 10-25-05
BIOLOGICAL FLUID TRANSPORT
In a new paper GALCIT faculty, John
Dabiri and Mory
Gharib report on their work in understanding
the fundamental nature of biological fluid transport. The work could lead
to new tools for diagnosing heart disease. 6-21-05
2004
The
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has selected
Professors Kaushik
Bhattacharya and Guruswami
Ravichandran as
the recipients of the 2004 Best Paper Award in the area of active
materials. The paper selected is "Large Electrostrictive
Actuation of Barium Titanate Single Crystals".
Symposium to
honor Wolfgang
Knauss on his 70th Birthday, November 15 - 16. 11-9-04
MURI
GRANT
Paul Dimotakis has been awarded a 5-year MURI grant for
research in "design, performance, and operation of efficient
ramjet/scramjet combined-cycle hypersonic propulsion". Dimotakis's
group will address several challenges in hypersonic flight, such
as non-ideal-gas dynamics and high-enthalpy ground testing, compressible-turbulence
mixing and combustion, and inlet and nozzle design. Ground testing
of full-scale designs and vehicles at fully duplicated flight
conditions, as well as other experiments, will be performed;
and an advanced simulation environment for integrated combined-cycle
hypersonic vehicles and technology will be developed.
Pollak
Distinguished Lecturer Award
Professor Mory Gharib has been selected for the Pollak Distinguished
Lecturer Award for 2004/2005. The Israel Pollak Distinguished Lecture
Series was established at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology)
in 1996. Two Pollak Lecturers are chosen each year from all areas
of science and engineering. Previous recipients of this honor have
included Sir John Thomas of Cambridge University (England), Professor
Juergen Troe, Director of the Max Planck Institute, Goettingen,
Germany, Steven Weinberg (Nobel Laureate 1979).
2003
FROCHT
AWARD
Professor
Ares J. Rosakis has
won the 2003 Frocht Award from the Society
for Experimental Mechanics. This award recognizes "outstanding
achievement as an educator in the field of experimental mechanics."
2002
Elected Fellow
Michael
Ortiz has been elected a Fellow
of the Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics (IACM),
in recognition of his significant contributions in the field
of computational mechanics.
Honorary
Member
 Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics, Wolfgang
Knauss,
has been elected an Honorary Member of the Society
of Experimental Mechanics. This is the highest honor that society bestows, and
recognizes Knauss's eminence in his field.
National
Academy of Sciences elects
Anatol Roshko, the Theodore von Kármán
Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus. 5-2-02
NEW
APPOINTMENT
Mory
Gharib has been appointed the Hans W. Liepmann Professor
of Aeronautics and Bioengineering. Gharib continues to work
at the forefront of experimental fluid mechanics
with applications in many different areas, and in particular, he
is a recognized leader in the field of vortex flows and unsteady
fluid dynamics. His group pioneered the use of digital particle
image velocimetry (DPIV), which is now used by many groups investigating
the mechanics of fluids.
recently
honored at the 14th U.S. National Congress of Theoretical and Applied
Mechanics
Wolfgang G. Knauss, Theodore von Kármán Professor
of Aeronautics and Applied Mechanics, and Anatol Roshko, Theodore
von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus, were
recently  honored at the 14th U.S. National Congress of Theoretical
and Applied Mechanics held June 24-28, 2002 in Blacksburg, VA with
symposia in their honor. Knauss was cited for "Leadership
and Many Contributions to the Mechanics of Structures and Materials" and
Roshko for "Seminal Contributions to Our Knowledge of Separated
Flows and Shear-Layer Turbulence."
elected
Fellow
Michael
Ortiz has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Applied
and Computational Mathematics (IACM), in recognition of his significant
contributions in the field of computational mechanics.
Sackler Scholar Award
Mory Gharib, Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering,
has been chosen to receive the Sackler Scholar Award from Tel Aviv
University. Sackler Scholars are selected for their eminence and
leadership in their respective fields of research.
Humboldt
Research Award
Michael
Ortiz, Professor of Aeronautics
and Mechanical Engineering, has been granted the Humboldt Research
Award for Senior U.S. Scientists, in Recognition of past accomplishments
in research and teaching.
elected Fellow
Hans
G. Hornung, C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor of
Aeronautics; Director of the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories,
has been elected Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
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