| Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
Professor Ares J. Rosakis, the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. Before that he held the distinction of being the fifth Director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT). As the director of GALCIT since 2004, under his leadership, GALCIT celebrated its 80-year anniversary last year, changed its name from the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology to the forward-looking Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (at CIT), and moved into the newly renovated Guggenheim building. He has also led the renewal of GALCIT's research program by building on its strengths in the mechanics of solids, fluids and propulsion and emphasizing, with the faculty, new research thrusts into space structures and bio-inspired design. Working closely with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) he also introduced a new Master's and PhD program in Space Engineering which has been extremely successful in attracting top graduate students across the nation. During his tenure as Director, five new faculty members joined GALCIT. Dr. Rosakis received his BA and MA degrees in Engineering Science from Oxford University in 1978. He went on to earn his Sc.M. and Ph.D. degrees in solid mechanics from Brown University. He joined Caltech and GALCIT as an Assistant Professor in 1982 where he currently is the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In 2009 Professor Rosakis was honored to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the spring of 2008 he was awarded the Distinguished Astor Visiting Professorship by the University of Oxford. In 2005, he was invited to the faculty of the Department of Terre Atmosphere-Ocean- École Normale Superieure in Paris as a Distinguished Visiting Professor. He is also a past Chairman of the Fracture & Failure Mechanics Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), a Fellow of ASME and a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. Most recently he became a member of the Executive Council of AMD of ASME, and the JPL Advisory Council of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and was just elected Fellow of the Society of Experimental Mechanics, SEM. He was the 2005 William M. Murray Medalist and Lecturer for the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development and application of advanced methods for accurate measurement of transient, dynamic phenomena. The Murray Medal is the highest recognition offered by SEM. He is the author of more than 260 works on quasi-static and dynamic failure of metals, composites, and interfaces with emphasis on the use of high speed visible and IR diagnostics and laser interferometry for the study of dynamic fracture and dynamic localization. Other interests include dynamic fragmentation; shear dominated intersonic rupture of inhomogeneous materials and composites, rupture mechanics of crustal earthquakes, shielding of spacecraft from hypervelocity micrometeoroid impact threats, the reliability of thin films and wafer level optical metrology. Most recently his research interests have focused in the mechanics of seismology, the physics of dynamic shear rupture and frictional sliding and in laboratory seismology. Professor Rosakis holds nine US patents on thin-film stress measurement and in situ wafer level metrology as well as on high speed infrared thermography. Another six patents on these subjects are pending.
|
|
HomeResearch Interests Research Group Facilities Curriculum Vitae Publications Contact
External Links Division of Engineering & Applied Science
"Scientists have long known that earthquakes generate several distinct sets of waves, ... each traveling at different speeds." Ares Rosakis's research is revealing new and previously unrecognized phenomena 'supershear'. |
last
update:
11/02/2009