Director: Sia Nemat-Nasser, Distinguished Professor of Mechanics and Materials

More than a dozen graduate students, undergraduates and postdoctoral fellows are conducting research under the center's auspices.

Recent News

Sia delivers the first Felix Bloch Lecture at Phononics 2011 Conference

June, 2011

At the 1st International Conference on Phononic Crystals, Metamaterials & Optomechanics [Phononics 2011],held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 29-June 2, 2011, Sia was honored as the inaugurral Felix Bloch Lecturer for his invaluable conributions to the field of "wave propagation in elastic periodic media." Sia's talk was entitled "Negative Effective Dynamic Mass-density and Stiffness: Micro-architecture and Phononic Transport in Periodic Composites". The Felix Bloch Lecture honors the eminent Swiss physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952. '2011 Felix Bloch Lecture'

Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) to award the Sia Nemat-Nasser Medal

June, 2011

In 2009, The Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) established the Sia Nemat-Nasser Award. In 2011 the Society elevated the award to a medal 'Sia Nemat-Nasser Medal' and cited Sia to be its first recipient. The medal will be presented at the SEM Annual Conference in Uncasville, CT, June 13-15, 2011. The medal is intended to recognize an individual for distinguished, innovative and outstanding work that has realized the impact of experimental mechanics on other scientific and engineering fields through an integrated multidisciplinary research.

Sia presented the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) 4th Elsevier Distinguished Lecture in Mechanics

April 18, 2011

Sia was invited to present the 4th Elsevier Distinguished Lecture in Mechanics, sponsored by Elsevier and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) Granular Science Laboratory. His lecture is entitled: Managing Stress Waves Over Multi-frequencies by Micro-Architectural Design of Materials.

Sia appointed UC Berkeley’s Springer Professor

Fall Semester, 2010

Sia was appointed by UC Berkeley’s Department of Mechanical Engineering as the Russell Severance Springer Professor of Mechanical Engineering for Fall Semester 2010. Sia presented five lectures at Berkeley focused on Dynamics of Composites with Controlled Micro‐Architectures.

Sia awarded the Thirteenth Yunchuan Aisinjioro-Soo Distinguished Lectureship

October, 2010

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, awarded the 2010-11 Yunchuan Aisinjioro-Soo Distinguished Lectureship to Sia in recognition of his contributions to mechanics and materials. Sia presented a lecture entitled Dynamics of Composites with Controlled Micro‐Architectures (Lecture is available in DVD form and at mms://streamer.cen.uiuc.edu/me_soo/Soo-Lecture-2010.wmv).

The 3rd Annual Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Medal is awarded at IMECE

November, 2010

The Materials Division of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) presented the 3rd annual Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Medal to Professors: Xi Chen of Columbia University and Markus J. Buehler of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the annual ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress (IMECE), held in British Columbia. The medal is to recognize: research excellence in the areas of experimental, computational, and theoretical mechanics and materials by young investigators who are within 10 years after their Ph.D. degree, with special emphasis placed on under-‐represented minorities and women.

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