Yashashree Kulkarni, the Bill D. Cook Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering, has received the 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Materials Division Centennial Mid-Career Award. She is being recognized for her “pioneering work in applying statistical mechanics methods to problems at the interface of mechanics and materials science.”
The ASME Materials Division Centennial Mid-Career Award was established in 2020 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Materials Division. The award honors mid-career researchers who have made impactful contributions at the interface of materials and mechanics.
“It is an honor to receive this prestigious award, and I am really humbled by it. I am grateful to all my wonderful students, mentors, and colleagues for their support through these years.” said Kulkarni.
Kulkarni is a recognized leader in mechanics and computational materials science. Specifically, her research focuses on elucidating the mechanical behavior of materials from fundamental scales using statistical mechanics, continuum mechanics, atomistic simulations and multi-scale modeling approaches with potential applications spanning the aerospace and energy industry to biotechnology and healthcare industry. Her work continues to push the boundaries of our understanding of the role of mechanics in materials science and biology.
In 2017, Kulkarni received ASME’s Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award recognizing her work on twin boundaries in crystalline materials and their role in next-generation nanostructured materials. She was named a fellow of the ASME in 2022 and is currently serving as the 2024 President of the Society of Engineering Science and as an associate editor of ASME’s flagship journal in mechanics, Applied Mechanics Reviews.
The formal presentation of the award will take place during the 2024 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE), scheduled for Nov. 11-14 in Portland, Oregon.