EMI Announces the Winners of Prestigious Mechanics Awards

The Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE, is pleased to announce the winners of several 2020 prestigious mechanics awards.

Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention

Prof. Ares J. Rosakis Ph.D., NAS, NAE, M.ASCE (Caltech) has been selected for " groundbreaking contributions to earthquake mechanics, specifically for inventing laboratory earthquakes which have transformed our understanding of failure and damage processes in the earth, that have proven central to infrastructure damage prevention. "

Maurice A. Biot Medal

Prof. Colin Atkinson Ph.D., FRS (Imperial College) has been selected " for outstanding contributions to the development of fundamental mathematical solutions to problems in fracture mechanics of fluid-saturated porous media and linking these contributions to the successful applications in energy resources recovery sectors worldwide ."

Jack E. Cermak Medal  ( Joint with the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE)

Peter J. Vickery, Ph.D., P.E., F. SEI, F. ASCE (Applied Research Associates, Inc.) has been selected " for his contributions in the development of hurricane hazard models for risk analysis and for his major impact on the development of building codes and standards in North America. " 

Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal

Prof. Dan M. Frangopol, Sc.D., P.E., F. SEI, F. EMI, Dist. M.ASCE (Lehigh University) has been selected " for outstanding contributions to the advancement of probabilistic, reliability and risk methods in civil engineering, particularly in developing probabilistic models for life-cycle performance assessment, maintenance and optimum management of civil infrastructure systems in diverse loading environments ."

George W. Housner Structural Control and Monitoring Medal

Prof. Yozo Fujino Ph.D., M.ASCE (Yokohama National University) has been selected " for pioneering research in the development and implementation of structural monitoring and control systems in large-scale structures, as well as for his commitment to developing innovative education programs for students ."

Raymond D. Mindlin Medal

Prof. Glaucio H. Paulino, Ph.D., F.EMI, M.ASCE (Georgia Tech) has been selected " for pioneering contributions to the field of mechanics, including geometric mechanics associated to origami and tensegrity engineering, which led to the creation of multifunctional structures and configurational metamaterials with unprecedented properties ."

Theodore von Kármán Medal

Prof. Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, Ph.D., NAS, NAE (New York University) has been selected " for lasting scientific contributions to diverse fluid dynamical topics from cryogenics to solar convection, especially the dynamics and mixing of turbulence in laboratory, computational and terrestrial flows, and vast impact on scholarship, scientific development and education in many countries ."

Nathan M. Newmark Medal   (Joint with the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE)

Prof. Satish Nagarajaiah, Ph.D., P.E., F. SEI, F. ASCE (Rice University) has been selected " for the development of nonlinear dynamic analysis techniques for base isolated structures, development of adaptive stiffness systems, negative stiffness systems, smart tuned mass dampers, and for sparse structural system identification techniques and laser based non-contact strain sensing using nanomaterials ."

Robert H. Scanlan Medal

Prof. Qiu-Sheng Li, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE (City University of Hong Kong) has been selected " for outstanding contributions to wind engineering and structural mechanics from fundamental research to engineering applications ."

EMI Leonardo da Vinci Award

Prof. Mija Hubler, Ph.D., M.ASCE, M.EMI (University of Colorado Boulder) has been selected" for pioneering breakthroughs in the understanding of toughness of materials due to microstructure feature arrangement, and innovations in experimental methods to study concrete fragmentation, surface characterization, and aging ."