Report fromApplied Mechanics Division the Chair 2014 Newsletter Applied Mechanics Executive Committee (2013-2014) Message from the Chair Timoshenko Medalist and Banquet Speech Other ASME/AMD Medals & Awards News from the Technical Committees News from the ASME-AMD Journals Other Awards Other News Yuri Bazilevs, Editor www.asme.org/divisions/amd Applied Mechanics Division 2013-2014 Executive Committee Vice-Chair Program Chair HuaJian Gao Peter Wriggers Chair Lawrence Bergman Program Vice-Chair Secretary Arun Shukla Pradeep Sharma Message from the Chair As June draws to a close, so also does my term on the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME. Over the past five years, the last year as Chair, I have worked with a truly remarkable and dedicated group, including past Chairs (in chronological order) Zhigang Suo (Harvard University), Tayfun Tezduyar (Rice University), Ares Rosakis (Caltech), and Ken Liechti (University of Texas at Austin) and current members Huajian Gao (Brown University), Peter Wriggers (Leibniz Universitat Hannover), Arun Shukla (University of Rhode Island), and Pradeep Sharma (University of Houston). I thank them all for their exceptional service to the Division. I have also had the privilege of working with the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Basic Engineering Group Operating Board (BEGOB), George Papadopoulos and Rick Cowan, respectively. AMD continues to have the largest membership of the 6 divisions within the Basic Engineering Group, the others being Bioengineering, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, and Tribology. The Executive Committee has a number of major responsibilities, including conference planning and execution, oversight of its two journals JAM and AMR, maintenance and development of awards, and interfacing with the AMD Technical Committees, all of which require a sustained level of effort. As of July 1, according to the EC succession plan, Huajian will become Chair; Peter, Vice- Chair; Arun, Program Chair; and Pradeep, Vice-Program Chair. I am delighted to welcome Balakumar Balachandran (University of Maryland, College Park) as Secretary of the EC beginning July 1. Bala is an outstanding dynamicist and mechanician who previously served as Chair of the AMD Dynamics and Control of Systems and Structures Committee. Dennis Kochmann (Caltech) 1 and Yuri Bazilevs (University of California, San Diego) will continue their valuable service to the EC as Recording Secretary and Newsletter Editor, respectively. This team will provide the leadership to AMD during what will most assuredly be a time of change and challenge, not only for the Division but for all of ASME, with a major reorganization looming. I’m confident, though, that AMD will remain in good hands for the foreseeable future. IMECE 2013 The AMD was well-represented at IMECE 2013, which was held in San Diego, CA, November 15-21. Peter Wriggers and Arun Shukla were the Chair and Vice-Chair, respectively, of Track 10, Mechanics of Solids, Structures and Fluids, which had more than 500 presentations spread over 38 symposia and 83 sessions. In addition, AMD co-sponsored symposia and sessions in Tracks 3, Biomedical and Biotechnology Engineering, and 4, Dynamics, Vibration and Control, accounting for nearly 250 additional presentations. The Medalists’ session included the Drucker medalist, Yonggang Huang, whose presentation was titled “Mechanics of Stretchable Electronics”; the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award recipient, Gui-Rong Liu, who presented, “On Smoothed Finite Element Methods”; and the Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award recipient, Lothar Gaul, whose talk was titled, “Acoustic Fluid-Structure Interaction”. The Koiter Lecture was delivered by Norman Fleck, whose presentation was titled, “Nanolattice Structures with Gyroid Topology”. AMD members recognized at the Honors Assembly included Richard Christensen, the Timoshenko Medal recipient; Sia Nemat-Nasser, who received the ASME Medal; and Ted Belytchko, who was made an Honorary Member of ASME. The Applied Mechanics Division Annual Honors and Awards Banquet and Ceremony was extremely well attended, to the extent that there were an insufficient number of seats to accommodate all of the ticket holders. One of the highlights of the evening was Richard Christensen’s speech accompanying his acceptance of the Timoshenko Medal. He spoke of technical generations of mechanicians, from Timoshenko to the present, and the unique characteristics of each. Others receiving Society-level awards included Norman Fleck, the Warner T. Koiter Medalist, and Yonggang Huang, the Daniel C. Drucker Medalist. Those receiving Division-level awards were Lother Gaul, the Thomas K. Caughey Awardee; Gui-Rong Liu, the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Awardee; and Wei Cai, the Thomas J. R. Hughes Young Investigator Awardee. The AMD- Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant Program had another successful year, with 29 proposals submitted for review by the members of the AMD EC. The four successful proposals were authored by Steven Cranford (Northeastern University), “Multi-phase Topologically Controlled Structural Fuses Inspired by the Mussel Byssus”; Addis Kidane (University of South Carolina), “A Novel 3D Full-Field Deformation Measurement at a Temperature Higher Than 1000 °C”; Christian Linder (Stanford University), “Design of Nanostructured Electrode Materials in Microfluidic Microbial Fuel Cells”; and Meredith Silberstein (Cornell University) “Mechanochemically Active Polymers: Development and Validation of Theory”. The first three proposals received funding from the Haythorntwaite Foundation, while the fourth was supported by the AMD. The Haythornthwaite Travel Grant Award Program for Graduate Students, sponsored by the Haythornthwaite Foundations, was also successful, funding 10 proposals out of 16 submitted. The best of those 10, as judged by the EC, was the given the Best Student Paper Award by the AMD. The recipient was Sahab Babaee (Harvard University), “Exploiting instabilities to design 3D soft metamaterials”. 2014 AMD Summer Meeting The Division participated in the US National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, which was held June 15-20, at Michigan State University in Lansing. The conference co-chairs were John 2 Foss and Thomas Pence, both of MSU, and the scientific chairperson was Thomas J. R. Hughes, of the University of Texas at Austin. More than 800 abstracts were received. IMECE 2014 Preparations are well under way for IMECE 2014, to be held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, November 14-20. Arun Shukla and Pradeep Sharma will serve as chair and co-chair, respectively, of Track 10, Mechanics of Solids, Structures and Fluids, and more than 500 abstracts and papers have been received to date. The following AMD members will be recognized at the AMD Honors and Awards Banquet and Ceremony on Tuesday, November 18: Robert McMeeking (UCSB) Timoshenko Medal Lallit Anand (MIT) Drucker Medal Guruswami Ravichandran (Caltech) Koiter Medal Glaucio Paulino (UIUC) Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award Alexander Vakakis (UIUC) Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award Katia Bertoldi (Harvard) Thomas J. R. Hughes Young Investigator Award Ryan Elliot (U Minn) Thomas J. R. Hughes Young Investigator Award Please join the members of the AMD EC in congratulating the awardees. McMAT 2015 Planning for the Applied Mechanics and Materials Conference (McMAT) continues, with the Materials Division taking the lead. The meeting is planned be held on June 24-26 in Seattle, WA, and Junlan Wang will serve as conference chair. Members of AMD are encouraged to support the meeting, which will cycle back to AMD in 2019. Journal of Applied Mechanics Yonggang Huang, Editor of JAM, continues his efforts to increase quality and achieve publication times consistent with competitive journals. While the review process has improved significantly, to an average first decision within 15 days and average final decision in 33 days, the publication process remains problematic and is the focus of his attention as he works with ASME toward improvement. An annual best paper award for young authors was established in 2013, sponsored by the AMD. The first recipient, announced at IMECE, was Asha Nurse of NIST. Applied Mechanics Reviews Harry Dankowicz, Editor of AMR, has made significant progress in revamping the journal in 2012. Six issues were published in 2013, which included 17 papers and 360 pages. He plans special issues in cooperation with other journals and has embarked on a number of activities including the publication of lecture notes from, for example, the Midwest Mechanics Series. He has also initiated a series of interviews with various AMD researchers, several of which have been published as podcasts available on the ASME digital database. The EC recently approved a best paper award for AMR authors in the name of Lloyd Donnell, first editor of AMR, to be given biannually in even years. Haythornthwaite Foundation Awards The Haythornthwaite Foundation will continue their support in 2014 of the Research Initiation Grant program for young faculty and the Travel Award program for students. Professor Jennifer Haythornthwaite of the Johns Hopkins University, representing the Foundation, graciously agreed to support 4 initiation grants and up to 10 travel awards this year. Both award programs will have been announced via direct e-mail to AMD members as well as on the ASME web site by the time this newsletter is published. Awardees will be announced at the 2014 IMECE. 3 Technical Committees The 19 Technical Committees