Honorary Member Award

The grade of Honorary Member is the highest honor the Society can bestow. Honorary Members are approved by the Executive Board in accordance with Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution which states, "An Honorary Member is an individual of widely recognized eminence in the field of experimental mechanics who is elected for life by unanimous secret ballot of the Executive Board upon written proposal by at least 25 Individual Members. Receipt of the proposal shall precede the election by at least 30 days. An Honorary Member shall have the same rights and privileges as an Individual Member. The number of living Honorary Members shall not exceed ten at any given time."

Each new honorary member is notified of this honor by letter from the President of the Society and publicly honored by presentation of a plaque at the next meeting of the Society.

 
The Society’s Honorary Members include:

 
2013 Honorary Member Award: Cesar Sciammarella

Cesar Sciammarella was the Director of the world renowned Experimental Mechanics Laboratory at the Illinois Institute of Technology for more than 30 years. In 2010 he became Professor Emeritus in the MMAE Dept at IIT. He is currently doing research at Northern Illinois University as Adjunct Professor. He recently completed a five year project funded by the Italian government to help the Politecnico of Bari develop its experimental mechanics lab and increase its future talent. In this time he has taken his pioneering developments in applying moiré, holography, and speckle interferometry methodologies as an experimental tool down to the nanometric level. This effort has taken him beyond the Rayleigh limit that traditionally was considered as the maximum resolution that could be obtained in optics in far field observations. His recent work has yielded measurements in the far field of nano crystals and nano spheres with accuracies on the order of ±3.3 nm. His recent discoveries will no doubt lead this field as he has done in the past. He has received many awards, including the Hetenyi, Lazan, and Frocht awards and the William M. Murray Medal from the Society for Experimental Mechanics.