Thoughts on an Engineering Career at a National Security Laboratory
Dr. Charles Reed Farrar, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
Date/Time: November 16, 11am EST
The ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) Structural Health Monitoring and Control, Education and Dynamics Committees are hosting a special Fireside Chat featuring Dr. Charles Reed Farrar on November 16 at 11:00 a.m. EST. The virtual event, titled "Thoughts on an Engineering Career at a National Security Laboratory" is part of the EMI Fireside Chat series and designed to inspire engineers and academics at all stages of their careers.
Abstract
In this fireside chat, Dr. Charles Farrar will share reflections and experiences from his 40+ year career at Los Alamos National Laboratory. That career had three distinct phases: 1. experimental and analytical earthquake engineering studies of commercial nuclear power plants, 2. experimental and analytical activities associated with LANL’s weapons system, and 3. structural health monitoring R&D. The non-defense related activities led to extensive external collaborations and the development of unique education programs. Career growth, professional development, mistakes made, and advice for students and early-career researchers will be integrated throughout these interactive discussions with opportunities for audience questions.
Biography
Charles Farrar is currently a guest scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where he has worked since 1983. He recently stepped down from his positions as the leader of LANL's Engineering Institute (for the past 20 years), and the coordinator for LANL's Engineering Leadership Council (past 3 years). The first ten years of his career focused on performing experimental and analytical structural dynamics studies for a wide variety of engineering systems. Since 1992 his research interests have focused on developing integrated hardware and software solutions to structural health monitoring (SHM) problems. The results of this research have been documented in 400+ coauthored journal publications, conference proceedings, reports and a book entitled Structural Health Monitoring A Machine Learning Perspective. He has an adjunct faculty appointment in the Structural Engineering Dept. at the Univ. of California San Diego where he teaches a course entitled "Structural Health Monitoring Principles," and he has developed a SHM short course that has been offered 49 times at conferences, to industry, and to government agencies around the world. He is the founder of the Los Alamos Dynamics Summer School, and he is a co-developer of the Los Alamos Judicial Science School. He is a LANL Fellow and a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers and the Society for Experimental Mechanics.
