Associate Professor Hugh Bruck Receives Innovative Research Award

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Hugh Bruck recently received the 2006 A.J. Durelli Award by the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM). The award recognizes a young professional who has introduced, or helped to introduce, an innovative approach and/or method into the field of experimental mechanics. Specifically, Bruck earns this recognition for his contributions in the area of optical methods for full-field deformation measurements, and its application to the development of new functionally graded materials, nanocomposites, and smart structures.

Bruck is currently serving his Fulbright Scholar tenure in Tel Aviv, Israel, awarded by the Council for the International Exchange for Scholars for the 2005-2006 academic year. Professor Bruck is pursuing research and teaching activities with colleagues at Tel Aviv University (TAU). During this stay at TAU, Bruck is hosted by Professor Jacob Aboudi, an internationally recognized leader in the area of micromechanical modeling of materials. They are working together on development of new Materials by Design computational and experimental approaches for microstructured and nanostructured materials.

Digital imagery from Bruck’s research has been featured as cover art on the June 2005 issue of Optical Engineering, a leading journal for research and development in optical science and engineering published by The International Society for Optical Engineering. The cover art is taken from his article in the journal, “Theoretical Development for Pointwise Digital Image Correlation,” co-authored by one of his PhD graduates, Dr. Huiqing Jin who is now at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. The imagery depicts displacement fields obtained from a new approach for obtaining displacement fields at the microscale and nanoscale to provide critical experimental data for developing advanced heterogeneous materials.

Published November 15, 2005