The 18th Annual Robert J. Melosh Medal Competition

The 18th Annual Robert J. Melosh Medal Competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis was held on Friday, April 28th, at Duke University. The Competition was inaugurated in 1989 to honor Professor Melosh, a pioneering researcher in finite element methods and former chairman of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University. The event is made possible through generous gifts to Duke University from Elsevier, Sandia National Laboratories, and the extended Melosh family.

The Competition consists of two phases. In the first phase, candidates submit extended abstracts for consideration by the panel of judges. The names and affiliations of the authors are not provided to the judges during this phase. The competition is open to students who are no more than one year beyond the completion of a graduate degree. From the submitted abstracts, six finalists are selected to give oral presentations of their work at the Melosh Symposium. During the past few years, the Symposium has been hosted at UC Berkeley, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Duke University. The winner and Melosh Medalist is selected on the basis of the combined written and oral scores.

The Melosh finalists represent a young group of researchers with bright futures. Indeed, many of the past finalists have continued on to successful careers in computational mechanics at universities, national laboratories, and industrial research centers. The group of finalists selected for this year's competition are no exception:

1. Jose Andrade, Stanford University


2. Roman Arciniega, Texas A&M University


3. Homayoun Heidari, NC State University


4. Shanhu Li, Ohio State University


5. Roger Sauer, UC Berkeley


6. Haim Waisman, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The judges for this year's Competition were Professor Tom Hughes, UT Austin, Professor JS Chen, UCLA, and Dr. William Scherzinger, from Sandia National Laboratories.

Dr. Homayoun Heidari was selected as the 18th Melosh Medalist for his paper entitled "Novel Subsurface Imaging Algorithms Based on the Finite Element Method." A list of past Melosh Medalists and judges is available at the competition website. A special issue of the journal Finite Elements in Analysis and Design will be assembled to commemorate the event.