Graduate Students - No openings as of 03/01/2006

Graduate students in our group typically have BS degrees in Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Engineering Mechanics. A strong background and interest in solid mechanics, material behavior and computational methods is required.

Coursework for the MS and PhD degrees comprises approximately one-third each in the areas of solid/structural mechanics, material science and computational methods. Most courses are taken outside of the Civil Engineering Department in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Material Science and Computer Science. The Civil Engineering courses in finite-element methods, large-scale computational methods, software engineering, plates, shells, fracture and fatigue provide the core of a very strong interdisciplinary program of study.

Competitive Research Fellowships are available for both MS and PhD students. Research assistantships are generally offered to PhD students and occasionally to truly exceptional MS students.

Opportunities are made available to work during summer months at research laboratories engaged in experimental fracture research (NASA, U.S. Navy).

Our computational facilities are outstanding. Each group member has a desktop, high-end HP Unix workstation and/or PC. We heavily use remote access to parallel supercomputers operated by NCSA and NASA.


Post-Doctoral Associates - No Openings as of 03/01/2006

Post-Doctoral Fellows play an important and growing role in our research. A typical appointment lasts two calendar years. Post-Docs lead efforts within on-going projects, initiate new projects as follow-ons to their dissertation research, interact with research sponsors, prepare research papers for publication and travel to professional meetings to represent our group. Appointments that also offer some teaching responsibilites can be arranged.

Post-Doc applicants should have a PhD in Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Engineering Mechanics with strong interdisciplinary coursework of the type described in the above section on Graduate Students. The dissertation should address problems in fracture, solid and/or computational mechanics. PhD research which integrates the three areas is of especially strong interest. Outstanding written and verbal communication skills are essential.

Our campus is a world-class research university that offers outstanding opportunities to enhance research expertise through seminar series, graduate coursework and interactions with exceptionally strong researchers in allied engineering departments.


Undergraduate Students - Positions Typically Available

Undergraduate students work in paid hourly positions to assist members of our research team. Typical tasks include library and web research, computer programming assignments, running parameter studies with our research codes, preparing publication quality graphs, tables, etc.