Lambros Chosen for SEM Frocht Award

7/16/2014 Susan Mumm, Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Media Specialist

AE Prof. John Lambros is recognized for his contributions to experimental mechanics education.

Written by Susan Mumm, Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Media Specialist

John Lambros
John Lambros
John Lambros
Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Prof. John Lambros is the 2014 winner of the Society for Experimental Mechanics M.M. Frocht Award (prize to be awarded in 2015).

Lambros is being recognized for “his dedication and contributions to experimental mechanics education of numerous students at the University of Illinois and beyond.”

In his 14 years as an Illinois faculty member, Lambros has developed a graduate experimental mechanics program that has been educating students in AE, Mechanical Engineering, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and Civil Engineering. He developed and taught the experimental mechanics courses AE 560 Fracture Mechanics Laboratory and AE 522 Dynamic Response of Materials, educating about 300 graduate students at Illinois in wave propagation and fracture mechanics.

Lambros has been included on the List of Teachers Ranked Excellent almost every semester he has taught graduate experimental mechanics and mechanics of materials courses.

He has served as AE’s Associate Head for the graduate program since 2011, and in this capacity has advised more than 80 master’s degree non-thesis students. Most recently, he helped develop AE’s online graduate program to provide off-campus students with courses toward earning a non-thesis master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

Graduate students he has mentored have earned numerous distinctions and awards. Two of his PhD students, Jorge Abanto-Bueno and Jamie Kimberly, became faculty members at Bradley University and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, respectively.

Lambros currently directs the Army Research Office-sponsored $6.25 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program from 2009 to 2015, and directed the Air Force-sponsored Midwest Structural Sciences Center from 2010 to 2013, educating 25 graduate students and 15 undergraduates in experimental mechanics and mechanics of materials.

He has also been a strong supporter of undergraduate education in experimental mechanics, having taught more than 1,500 undergrads in his 20-year career. Many of those he has mentored have gone on to graduate study at universities including Illinois, the California Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and others. The UI student chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics selected Lambros as the 2005 Teacher of the Year.

Lambros earned his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1988. He earned a master’s degree and a PhD in aeronautics from Caltech in 1989 and 1994, respectively. Following a year as a postdoctoral research associate at Caltech, Lambros was an assistant professor at the University of Delaware before coming to Illinois.

The Frocht Award recognizes “outstanding achievement as an educator in the field of experimental mechanics,” and is presented annually by the Society for Experimental Mechanics.

 


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This story was published July 16, 2014.