USACM Announces New Award

USACM announces the establishment of the J. Tinsley Oden Medal to be given in recognition of outstanding and sustained contributions to computational science, engineering, and mathematics. These contributions shall be in the form of important research results that significantly advance the understanding of theories and methods of computational science, engineering and mathematics that have broad applicability to computational mechanics. This award replaces the USACM Computational and Applied Sciences Award.

A founding member and past president of both USACM and IACM, J. Tinsley Oden is also the founding Director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES). The Institute supports broad interdisciplinary research and academic programs in computational engineering and sciences, involving four colleges and 18 academic departments within UT Austin. An author of over 600 scientific publications: books, book chapters, conference papers, and monographs, including 50 books he has authored or edited. These include Contact Problems in Elasticity, the six-volume series: Finite Elements, An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Finite Elements, and several textbooks, including Applied Functional Analysis and Mechanics of Elastic Structures, and A Posteriori Error Estimation in Finite Element Analysis. His most recent book, Introduction to Mathematical Modeling: A Course in Mechanics, was published in 2011. His treatise, Finite Elements of Nonlinear Continua, published in 1972, subsequently translated into Russian, Chinese, and Japanese and published in a Dover edition in 2007, is cited as having not only demonstrated the great potential of computational methods for producing quantitative realizations of the most complex theories of physical behavior of materials and mechanical systems, but also established computational mechanics as a new intellectually rich discipline that was built upon deep concepts in mathematics, computer sciences, physics, and mechanics.

Dr. Oden is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a representative of IACM on the IUTAM Working Party 5 on Computational Mechanics and serves on numerous organizational, scientific and advisory committees for international conferences and symposia. Oden has received many honors and awards for his research and writings, including six honorary doctorates, the IACM Gauss-Newton Medal, the USACM von Neumann Medal, the Zienkiewicz Medal, the von Karmen Medal, the Timoshenko Medal, and many others. He is an Editor of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering and serves on the editorial board of 27 scientific journals.