The Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich invites applications for a Professorship in Continuum Mechanics at the Full or Associate Professor level.  Submit applications before 30 September 2008.

After making a list of the great engineering achievements of the 20th century, the National Academy of Engineering, of the United States, has recently described a list of the grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century (of no particular order):

Message from Stephen W. Tsai, of Stanford University.  After well received, successful completion of Composites Design Tutorial-1, we are pleased to announce Composites Design Tutorial-2 starting on April 8, 2008. This tutorial, comprising of twelve weekly 120-minute live sessions, is offered over the Internet using the cutting edge WebEx application with VoIP. The tutorial is offered to the Eastern and Western Worlds at convenient local time followed by active Q&A in English and other three languages for extended period. This allows the participants to access the tutorial contents on demand 24/7, even after the live tutorial sessions.

This cover story in the recent issue of Harvard Magazine is about the work of Mahadevan.  How paint dries?  Why flags flutter?  How leaves fold?  Such questions of everyday objects have led Maha to pose mathematical questions, which often lead to surprisingly satisfying answers.  Many people have watched Maha demonstrate intriguing phenomena in his office.  If you haven't, do not miss this accompanying  short video of his performance.   

Return to the homepage of the Journal Club.

2008

• July 15, Plasticity at sub-micron scales, Wei Cai
• July 1, Mechanics in Neuronal Development, Kristian Franze
• June 15,  Kinetics of structural phase transitions, Kaushik Dayal
• June 1, Magnetic resonance imaging in biomechanics, Valentina Taviani
• May 15, Experimental mechanics at the nanoscale, Julia Greer
• May 1, Mechanical behavior of polymer-matrix nanocomposites, L. Roy Xu
• April 15, Fracture of ferroelectrics, Chad Landis
• April 1, Strain measurement in soft tissues, Tammy Haut Donahue
• March 15, Impact of Chip-Package Interaction on Reliability of Copper/Low K Interconnects and Beyond, Rui Huang
• March 1, Measuring Cellular Tractions, Vesna Damljanovic
• February 15, Plasticity and failure in metallic glasses, Yanfei Gao
• February 1, Spider silk and protein mechanics , Sinan Keten
• January 15, Active polymer nanocomposites, Zoubeida Ounaies
• January 1, Role of mechanics in biomimetics, Michelle Oyen

2007

• December, Elastodynamic band gaps and metamaterials, Biswajit Bannerjee
• November, Surface effects on properties of nanostructures, Harold Park
• October, Irreversible thermodynamics of continuous media, Anurag Gupta
• September, Quantum effects in solid mechanics, Harley Johnson
• August, Nanoindentation with focus on soft matter, Virginia Ferguson
• July, Mechanics of hydrogels, Jerry Qi
• June, Cellular mechanotransduction, Patrick Onck
• May, Experimental mechanics of nano building blocks, Xiaodong Li
• April, Analytical modeling of biomolecules, Xi Chen
• March, Mechanics of flexible electronics, Teng Li
• February, Computational mechanics of biomembranes, John E. Dolbow
• January, Biomechanics and non-affine kinematics, Michelle L. Oyen

Return to the homepage of the Journal Club.

via Ken Chong.  On behalf of the Division of Graduate Education (DGE) in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) we call your attention to an opportunity to request support for research and evaluation projects focused on graduate education. This opportunity is embedded in the Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) program managed by the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) in EHR. The REESE Program Solicitation (NSF 07-595) can be viewed at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07595/nsf07595.htm

I am writing to draw your attention to our annual solicitation for applications to Rowland Junior Fellows Program, which may be of interest to your graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

We have currently eight Rowland Junior Fellows at the Institute. As a look at our website will tell you (http://rowland.harvard.edu), they work on a broad range of topics, from condensed matter physics to plant physiology.

House Passes $600 Million Increase in National Science Foundation Budget July 27, 2007 --The U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that would increase funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) by nearly $600 million or 10 percent to $6.5 billion in fiscal year 2008.  The bill would put NSF on track to double its budget in less than 10 years.

Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics are delighted to announce the launch of The Batchelor Prize, sponsored by the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, to be awarded in recognition of outstanding research in fluid mechanics.

The Batchelor Prize is an award initially of US$25,000 to be presented at the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics (ICTAM), taking place in Adelaide in August 2008. The recipient of the prize will deliver a lecture at ICTAM and this will also be published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics and be made freely available on the Cambridge Journals website.

Further details and instructions for making nominations are contained in the attached file. The deadline for nominations is 30 September 2007.

You will be alerted whenever someone posts to the Research Channel if you subscribe to RSS feeds.

• 30 March 2007. At a suggestion of Henry Tan, an RSS feed for comments is added as a button"comment at a glance" on the right side of iMechanica.
• 29 March 2007. An aggregator, "Random readings", is added to the rightside of iMechanica.
• 7 March 2007. Michelle Oyen posted an entry "Making iMechanica a better global forum".
  
  

Lambert Ben Freund (LBF) was born on November 23, 1942, in Johnsburg, Illinois, a tiny rural community of a few hundred people in the northeast corner of the state. This part of the Midwest was opened to European settlement by the Black Hawk War of the 1830s. A small delegation of his ancestors arrived in the area in 1841. The enthusiastic letters they wrote to relatives waiting in Bavaria and the Rhineland resulted in rapid settlement of the area by immigrant families in the mid-1800s. The farm that would become the Freund family farm was deeded to one of the settlers through an 1820 Act of Congress for the sale of public lands by the government. It was subsequently purchased by LBF's great-grandfather who passed on one quarter section (160 acres) to each of four sons, one of whom was LBF's grandfather. The land was then passed on to the only surviving son, Bernard Freund. The third of four children, LBF was raised by his parents, Bernard and Anita Freund, on the family dairy farm. The responsibilities for managing a dairy farm took precedence over social activities and school sports. At the same time, it provided a vigorous outdoor life with exposure to the cycles of nature, the art of breeding livestock and an appreciation for the value of hard work. He attended St. John the Baptist Elementary School and the McHenry Consolidated High School where he demonstrated a talent for mathematics and science.

Registration

• Why should I use my full name as my user name?
• What do I need to register for an account?
• I enjoy reading iMechanica, but am not ready to post anything, should I register?
• Lost password? You can request a new password.

Maintain your account

• Why should I add my photo to my profile and how?
• Can I change my user name?
• How can I update my profile?
• How do I accept emails from other users?

Blogs

At the Annual Dinner of the Applied Mechanics Division last November, in Orlando, Florida, Professor Carl T. Herakovich was presented the 2005 Applied Mechanics Award, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to mechanics of fibrous composite materials, and his distinguished service to the mechanics and engineering science community. The text of his acceptance speech follows.

Thanks Wing, it is indeed a great honor and pleasure to be recognized by the Applied Mechanics community.

I hold the mechanics community in the highest regards and with the utmost respect. I am always so impressed by the intelligence of the people in this community, their honesty and their candor.

And I can really enjoy being around mechanicians in a social setting. Give them a little wine at dinner and it can be quite a party. I really do enjoy the people in this community. I feel very much at home. (Comment briefly on the dinner in Warsaw at the International Congress in August 2004, and the dinner in DC in Sept. 2005.)