SEM Selects Chasiotis for Durelli Award

Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Professor Ioannis Chasiotis adds to an impressive list of honors achieved in his young career with his recent selection as the 2013 A.J. Durelli Award recipient. 

Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Professor Ioannis Chasiotis

The Society for Experimental Mechanics award recognizes “significant, innovative contributions of new techniques in experimental mechanics.” Recently promoted as a full professor, Chasiotis has been cited for “innovative experimental methods to resolve deformation in heterogeneous thin films and nanoscale polymeric structures with nanoscale resolution.”

Chasiotis will receive the Durelli Award at the SEM 2013 Conference and Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics, which is to be held on June 3-5, 2013, in Lombard, Illinois.

Joining AE in 2005, Chasiotis’ research interests focus on experimental mechanics at the micron and the nanoscales, the mechanical reliability of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) and in general thin films and the failure mechanics of heterogeneous materials.

Since coming to Illinois, his honors have included:

• The American Society of Mechanical Engineers J.R. Hughes Yong Investigator Award (2011)
• Society of Engineering Science (SES) Young Investigator Medal (2011)
• SEM M. Hetényi Award for Best Research Paper published in 2010 in Experimental Mechanics.Named College of Engineering at Illinois Donald Biggar Willett Scholar (2010)
• Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by the National Science Foundation (2008)
• College of Engineering Xerox Award for Faculty Research (2010)
• (2007)Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2007)

Chasiotis started his career at the University of Virginia, having earned a master’s degree and PhD in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He earned his first degree in chemical engineering in 1996 from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Chasiotis’ latest award was named in honor of A.J. Durelli, one of the most outstanding experimental stress analysts in the world during the second half of the twentieth century. Known primarily for his work in brittle lacquer techniques, photoelasticity, and moiré methods, Durelli consistently sought out new methods to solve problems rather than to solve new problems with existing methods. He often challenged his students and colleagues to view the world from a different perspective.