SEM Fellow

In 1975, the Honors Committee recommended a bylaws change which would enable a Fellow grade of membership to be established. The recommendation, which was approved, changed Article IV, Section 3 to read: "A Fellow shall be an individual who has distinguished himself/herself in some field in which the Society has interest, who has been a member of the Society for at least ten consecutive years, and whose contributions to the Society and the technical community have justified this honor. The number and manner of election of Fellows shall be as specified by the Executive Committee.

For more details on the Fellow Grade of Membership, Nomination Requirements, or the schedule followed by the Committee of Fellows, please select one of the items below.

• Fellow Grade of Membership
• Nomination Fact Sheet
• Calendar, Committee of Fellows

The Fellows Committee has prepared a nomination form which details all pertinent information required to have someone's name placed for nomination. Copies of the appropriate form are available from this site (see below) or may be obtained from:

SEM

7 School Street

Bethel, CT 06801

Fax: 203-790-4472

The Fellows Committee meets at the SEM Annual Conference to elect a slate of nominees for presentation at the following SEM Annual Conference.

Members who have been selected for Fellow grade since its inception follow.

 
2011 Fellow Awards: Eddie O'Brien, Daniel Rittel, Nancy Sottos

Eddie O’Brien is a Past President of SEM serving in 2005 following Board membership involving the Society Committees.  Early on Eddie took a strong interest in the Optics Technical Division especially Applied Photoelasticity leading to the chairmanship following great names - Tom Corby and Alex Redner. Eddie has been a career Stress Analyst in the UK Aircraft Industry and with a PhD gained at Sheffield University set up and led the Experimental Mechanics Group within British Aerospace which subsequently became Airbus UK working on projects ranging from Concorde to the A380 and A350.

Many design and manufacturing issues have been resolved using concepts developed by Eddie aided by the wealth of experience found in SEM. A number of patents have been awarded as well as over 40 single author technical papers. Eddie has been the recipient of the Zandman, Brewer and Tatnall Awards. SEM has always been a great assistance to Eddie as was the link with the BSSM - becoming Chairman in 1999-2000.

The SEM encouraged both ‘research’ and ‘teaching by example to the next generation’. Since retiring from Airbus in 2005, Eddie set up Aircraft Technical Solutions Ltd. to provide specialist Experimental Mechanics services to Airbus as well as specialist lectures to selected Universities.

Structural Health Monitoring of Aircraft Structures has become one of Eddies specialist interests. Recent retirement from ATS Ltd concluded with him being awarded a patent for a system to aid the unambiguous detection of heavy landings applied to Aircraft Landing Gears.

Having been elected Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and Fellow of the Institute of Physics in the UK - Fellow of SEM now brings International recognition for work in a field in which the Society has an interest.

Daniel Rittel holds a PhD in Materials Science (1988) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He spent 2 years as a postdoc at Yale University working on the dynamic fracture of tungsten base heavy alloys, followed by 3.5 years at Ecole Polytechnique (France), working on experimental dynamic fracture mechanics. He the joined Technion (Israel Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering) in 1994 where he founded the Dynamic Fracture Laboratory.

As of today, D. Rittel holds the Zandman Chair in Experimental Mechanics, and heads the Materials Mechanics Center. He is also the Deputy Senior Vice President of Technion. Since 2000, D. Rittel visits regularly Caltech (Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories, G. Ravichandran's group), where he was the Clark B. Millikan Visiting Professor in Aeronautics (2006-2007).

Throughout the years, D. Rittel has has developed expertise in the many experimental aspects of dynamic failure, including fracture mechanics, constitutive behavior, dynamic failure mechanisms and numerical modeling. D. Rittel is also active in the field of Structural Health Monitoring.

Dr. Rittel is also Associate Editor of Experimental Mechanics, Mechanics of Materials and the International Journal of Engineering Science. He has co-authored over 100 technical publications.

Nancy Sottos is the Donald B. Willet Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also a co-chair of the Molecular and Electronic Nanostructures Research Theme at the Beckman Institute. Sottos started her career at Illinois in 1991 after earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Delaware.  Her research group studies the mechanics of complex, heterogeneous materials such as self-healing polymers, advanced composites, and thin film microelectronic devices, specializing in micro and nanoscale characterization of deformation and failure in these material systems.  Sottos’ research and teaching awards include the ONR Young Investigator Award (1992), Outstanding Engineering Advisor Award (1992, 1998, 1999 and 2002), the R.E. Miller award for Excellence in Teaching (1999), University Scholar (2002), the University of Delaware Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement (2002), the Hetényi Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics (2004), Scientific American's SciAm 50 Award (2008), Fellow of the Society of Engineering Science Fellow (2007), and the M.M. Frocht and B.J. Lazan awards from the Society for Experimental Mechanics. She served as Associate Editor (1999-2002) and as Technical Editor (2003-2006) for Experimental Mechanics and currently chairs the International Advisory Board.  She has also been a member of the SEM Executive Committee (2007-2009).