M. HETÉNYI Award

This award was established in 1967 for the best research paper published in Experimental Mechanics. It was named in honor of Dr. Miklos Hetényi. A brief biography and an abridged list of Dr. Hetényi's professional accomplishments follow:

Education: University of Technical Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 1924-30; Diploma in Civil Engineering, 1931; Graduate work with H.M. Westerguard, Univ. of Illinois, 1934-35 and with S.P. Timoshenko, Univ. of Michigan, 1935-36; PhD in Eng. Mechanics, 1936.

Publications: Author of over 70 scientific papers on analytical and experimental mechanics and on the theory of structures; Beams on Elastic Foundations, Univ. of Michigan, 1946; Coeditor of Proc. of the Tenth International Congress on Applied Mechanics, Springer Ed., 1969.

Contributions to SEM: 1 of 4 founders, 1943; Vice President, 1943-44; 2nd President, 1944-45; Editor, Handbook of Experimental Stress Analysis, 1950.

General Contributions: Development and Application of Three-Dimensional Photoelasticity; Development of a "Reduction Method" for the Analysis of Continuous Frames; Development of a "Method of Initial Parameters" for the Analysis of beams, beam-grillages, and beams in elastic foundations; Solution for Axi-Symmetrical Deformation of Spherical Shells and Related Structures.

Award Guidelines

Past Recipients are:

2012 M. Hetényi Award:  Jonnalagadda, KN Chasiotis, I, Yagnamurthy, S, Lambros, J, Pulskamp, J, Polcawich, R, and Dubey, M

For their outstanding paper titled “Experimental Investigation of Strain Rate Dependence of Nanocrystalline Pt Films”, Experimental Mechanics, Volume: 50, No:1, Pages: 25-35, 2010.

Krishna Jonnalagadda

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India 2009 - present
Postdoctoral Fellow, The Johns Hopkins University, 2008 - 2009
Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. Advisor: Prof. Chasiotis
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico, 2003.
M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of New Mexicio, 2003.
B.E., Mechanical Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, 1999.

Professor Chasiotis is a Willett Faculty Scholar of Engineering, an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering, and an affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology in 2002 and 1998, respectively, and a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece in 1996.

His research focuses on the experimental deformation and fracture mechanics of thin films, and nanoscale structures and their composites. He has developed high resolution methods to capture full-field strains in heterogeneous materials at the micro and the nanoscale, and MEMS-based methods to investigate strain rate dependent mechanisms of inelastic material behavior in nanocrystalline metal films and polymeric nanofibers.

Sivakumar Yagnamurthy received the B. S degree (2006) in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India and M.S degree (2009) from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering. 

His research interests include the mechanical behavior of thin film materials, fracture mechanics of brittle materials at small scales, and the reliability of microelectromechanical systems.

John Lambros was born on April 10, 1967, in Athens, Greece. After spending several years in Melbourne, Australia, he returned to Greece where he attended high school at Athens College. After graduating from high school in 1985, he went to England to study Aeronautical Engineering. In 1988 he received a B.Eng. (Bachelors of Engineering) degree with first class honors in Aeronautics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London. He then moved to Pasadena, CA, and in 1989 he received an MS degree and in 1994 a Ph.D. both in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. Until August 1995 he remained at Caltech as a postdoctoral research fellow. In 1995 he joined as an Assistant Professor the department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Delaware where he stayed until 2000. In August 2000 he became an Associate Professor in the Aerospace Engineering department at the University of Illinois and Urbana-Champaign. In 2007 he was promoted to the rank of Professor in the same department. He have been a member of the SEM since the time I was a graduate student and he has regularly attend the annual meetings in many capacities. He also served for two terms, during 1999-2005, as an Associate Technical Editor of Experimental Mechanics and one term, 2008-2010, as a member-at-large of the Executive Board of SEM. He am currently the Director of the Army-funded Center on Nonlinear Stress Wave Mitigation and the Technical Director of the Air Force-funded Midwest Structural Sciences Center.

Jeffrey S. Pulskamp is a MEMS Design and Mechanical Engineer in the Micro & Nano Materials & Devices Branch of the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Adelphi, MD.  He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD in 2000.  His current research interests include RF MEMS devices, electro-mechanical design and modeling of MEMS, and millimeter-scale robotics.  He currently holds 8 patents related to piezoelectric MEMS devices and has an additional 5 patents pending. 

Ronald G. Polcawich is a staff researcher in the Micro & Nano Materials & Devices Branch of US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Adelphi, MD.    He received a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (1997), and M.S. degree in Materials from Penn State University (1999), and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Penn State University (2007).  He is currently the team lead for the RF MEMS and mm-Scale Robotics programs at ARL.  The current research programs include switches and phase shifters for phased array antennas, tunable MEMS resonators/filters for secure communication, and mobile unattended sensor platforms.  His research activities include materials processing of PZT thin films, MEMS fabrication, piezoelectric MEMS, RF components, MEMS actuators, and mm-scale robotics.  He currently holds 5 patents and has authored over 30 journal articles and one book chapter on fabrication and design of piezoelectric MEMS devices.

Dr. Madan Dubey is a Research Physical Scientist, Team Lead, Nanoelectronics, in Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate US Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD, USA. He is involved in planning, initiate, conduct and coordinate fundamental research concerning the concepts, phenomena and methodology associated with Nano/MEMS (Nano/micro-electro-mechanical-systems. Develop new process of making Graphene RF& E and MEMS devices. Assure the R&D is responsible to user requirements; develop plans for the implementation of program objectives and goals; conduct reviews to achieve cross-functional integration and overall prioritization of the tech base program to include maximum exploitation of technologies available in industry, international and other sources.