March 8, 2017
Kenneth Liechti, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at UT Austin, was selected to receive the Society of Experimental Mechanics’ (SEM) prestigious William M. Murray Lecture award. Given annually, the lecture is presented each year in honor of Dr. William MacGregor Murray who was the first SEM president and longtime secretary-treasurer.
Liechti was selected “for outstanding contributions to the science and engineering of adhesion and interfacial failure.” He presented the lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Mechanics this June, where he was also recognized with a plaque in his honor.
Liechti’s research interests lie in the deformation and failure mechanisms in multilayered materials and structures using a combination of experimental and numerical stress analytical techniques. Currently, he and his colleagues are working on developing methods for roll-to-roll manufacturing of graphene, which could aid in the mass-production of the next generation of electronics.
Liechti holds the Zarrow Centennial Professorship in Engineering. He has published more than 100 journal papers and is co-author of the book Mechanics of Materials with Marc Bedford. In 2015, he was honored with the Adhesion Society’s Award for Excellence in Adhesion Science. He is a Fellow of SEM, ASME, AAM, the Adhesion Society and an Associate Fellow of AIAA.
He is the University Education Director for the NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (NERC) for Nanomanufacturing Systems for Mobile Computing and Mobile Energy Technologies (NASCENT) and Associate Director of the Center for Mechanics of Solids, Structures and Materials at UT Austin.
