2009 ASCE/EMI Membership Renewal
Have you renewed your 2009 ASCE membership? ASCE dues were due on Dec. 31, 2008, which means if you haven’t renewed your 2009 membership, you run the risk of losing your valuable ASCE benefits, such as your free membership in the Engineering Mechanics Institute.
To be sure to retain your membership in EMI, please check the EMI box on your renewal form. Also, please consider making a voluntary contribution designated for EMI. Your generous contributions allow EMI to support many new initiatives to better serve its membership.
Click here to renew today!
The membership of EMI-only members (charter members) is valid until December 31, 2009, as a special offer on the occasion of the launch of EMI.
You can renew your ASCE and Institute membership today by going to www.asce.org/renewal.
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Mechanics Research Group Profile: Professor Yonggang Huang's Mechanics of Materials Research Group at Northwestern University
The profile of Professor Yonggang Huang's Mechanics of Materials Research Group at Northwestern University presents the goals of the research group (developing mechanics models for advanced technology such as transfer printing, stretchable electronics, flexible silicon solar cell, and electronic eye camera), provides a sampling of the group’s research topics, a list of the members and institutions of the research group. It also lists selected publications and includes links to relevant web pages.
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coming soon!
EMI to Launch a Member Referral Program
Pursuing its membership development effort, EMI will launch a member referral program next month. The “Member get a Member" initiative makes it easy for current EMI members to refer friends or colleagues for potential membership in EMI. The process is extremely simple.
Once the name and e-mail address of someone who may be interested in joining EMI are entered on-line, an e-mail message is sent automatically to the prospective member inviting him/her to consider joining EMI, and providing information on EMI and EMI membership. Each quarter, a drawing will be made among the members who referred colleagues who actually joined EMI. The winner will receive an Apple iPod nano.
Look for more information in next month's newsletter on how to refer your colleagues, and help EMI become a strong and vibrant organization!
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ASCE, ASME and SES will hold their Joint Conference on Mechanics and Materials on June 24-27, 2009 in Blacksburg, VA. The conference will be chaired by Dr. Ishwar K. Puri, Department Head, Engineering Science and Mechanics, Virginia Tech. The conference web site provides details, including an invitation to submit symposium and organized session proposals, key dates and instructions for the submission of abstracts and registration information.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is March 15, 2009.
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Fourth Biot Conference on Poromechanics to be held June 8-10, 2009 at Columbia University
The Fourth Biot Conference on Poromechanics will be held at Columbia University on June 8-10, 2009. The Conference is to honor Prof. Maurice Anthony Biot, a world renowned engineer, physicist, and applied mathematician, who was a professor of mechanics at Columbia University from 1937-1945. The Conference will emphasize the theories and applications of poromechanics to new and emerging fields, including life science, earth science, and new materials, in addition to the traditional areas of poromechanics such as geotechnical engineering, petroleum engineering, acoustics, etc.
The plenary lectures will be given by Zdenek Bazant of Northwestern University (Modeling of Creep and Hygrothermal Deformations of Concrete: Intriguing Consequences of Nano-Porosity) and James Rice of Harvard University (Some Fluid-Solid Interactions in Earthquake and Glacier Dynamics). In addition, several keynotes lectures by Zhigang Suo, Franz-Josef Ulm, Jerry Harris, Shaul Sorek, Fumio Tatsuoka, and Ronaldo Borja will be included. Over 230 abstracts have been received and the full papers are currently under review.
Additional information on the Conference is available at http://www.civil.columbia.edu/biot
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Call for Contributions to the EMI News Series of Articles on Mechanics Research Groups
The previous issue of EMI News included the first in a series of short articles featuring mechanics research groups. A second such article was received from Prof. Yonggang Huang and features his Mechanics of Materials Research Group at Northwestern University.
EMI members are encouraged to submit similar articles profiling their research groups to Professor Boris Jeremic, Editor of the EMI newsletter, at jeremic@ucdavis.edu.
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New Associate Editors of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics
The EMI Board of Governors recently approved two changes to the Associate Editor positions for the Journal of Engineering Mechanics. Prof. Andrew Smyth (Columbia University) will be a second Associate Editor for the area of Structural Health Monitoring and Control, an area which continues to receive a large number of papers. Prof. Costas Papadimitriou (University of Thessaly, Greece) will serve as a new Associate Editor for the area of Dynamics, replacing Andrew Smyth.
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Student Paper Award for Probabilistic Methods Papers at ASCE/EMI Engineering Mechanics Conferences
The EMI Board of Governors recently approved the request of the Probabilistic Mechanics Committee to approve the rules it proposed for a Student Paper Award for Probabilistic Mechanics Papers. The rules for forming the Awards Sub-Committee, judging papers, and making a student paper award for the best paper incorporating probabilistic methods at the annual engineering mechanics conference sponsored by the Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE can be found here.
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Student Paper and Presentation Award for Pavement Mechanics
The EMI Task Committee on Mechanics of Pavements announces its Student Paper and Presentation Award for Pavement Mechanics. The award will consist of a $250 prize and a certificate for each student author. The purpose of the award is to reward, recognize and encourage active student participation in the annual EMI conference. Only a single monetary award can be made per paper or presentation. By providing recognition for the students’ work, the committee will also raise the awareness and reach of pavement mechanics in the areas of pavements and materials. As such, the award will be focused on rewarding excellence in both the written paper and the oral presentation of work conducted primarily by students.
Up to three recognition awards for the best student papers/presentations will be announced prior to the end of the annual EMI conference. If no paper is deemed of sufficient quality, awards may not be given.
At the EM 08 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, two recipients were selected for receiving the award for their quality presentations:
Sanjeev Adhikari and Zhanping You, "Evaluation of Beam Fatigue Model Based on Laboratory Tests"
Ewan Y.G. Chen, Ernie Pan (advisor), Roger Green, "Surface Loading of A Multilayered Viscoelastic Pavement: Semi-Analytical Solution".
In both cases, the first author is the student who did the majority of the work and the presentation.
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New Committee Activities
The EMI Task Committee on Mechanics of Pavements had a well attended meeting on January 11 in Washington, DC on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. The Task Committee plans to organize a pavement mechanics symposium at two upcoming conferences:
1- The 10th US National Congress of Computational Mechanics, July 16-19, Columbus, Ohio (http://usnccm-10.eng.ohio-state.edu/abstractsub.html)
2- The 2009 Joint ASCE-ASME and SES Conference on Mechanics of Materials, June 24-29, Blacksburg, Virginia (Abstract submission deadline: March 15, 2009).
The Task Committee is also exploring the possibility of holding a workshop on pavement modeling and simulation on the occasion of the 2009 Joint ASCE-ASM-SES Conference on Mechanics of Materials at Virginia Tech.
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Technical Region Directors Report
The Technical Region of ASCE, created by the latest bylaws of the Society, is comprised of the 8 Institutes of ASCE and is represented on the ASCE Board of Direction by two Technical Region Directors, Tom Rachford, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE and Ron Smith, Ph.D., P.E. Their latest report is available here.
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Obituary
George W. Housner , a pioneer in the modern field of earthquake engineering, developing the most complete mathematical system to analyze the effects of ground shaking on structures, died on Monday, November 10, 2008. He was 97. Housner, the Braun professor emeritus of engineering at Caltech, died of natural causes at a Pasadena rest home.
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Contact Us
EMI Members wishing to publish announcements of interest in the EMI newsletter should send a draft of the proposed text to Professor Boris Jeremic, Editor of the EMI newsletter, at jeremic@ucdavis.edu.
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