Zikry receives 2015 RJ Reynolds Award

Dr. Mohammed Zikry, Zan Prevost Smith Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, is the thirty-first recipient of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Awards for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension. Zikry delivered an award lecture Monday, Nov. 2, at the Larry K. Monteith Engineering Research Center on NC State’s Centennial Campus. His lecture was entitled, “Material Integration for Failure Resistant Systems: What Can Modeling Provide?”

The award was established in 1981 within the College of Engineering to honor a member of the engineering faculty who has demonstrated superiority in several areas of activity that relate to the University’s three-fold mission of teaching, research and extension. The annual award is supported by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company through the NC State Engineering Foundation to recognize scientific and educational achievements in fields of engineering. The recipient is given a $25,000 prize distributed over five years.

Zikry is internationally recognized as an expert in the area of computational mechanics and modeling. His work and publications have led to the development of new three-dimensional dislocation-density-based crystalline constitutive formulations and computational schemes that account for microstructural effects, such as grain boundary orientations and distributions, grain-size, and slip impedance and transmission at grain boundary interfaces in polycrystalline aggregates.

The ideas he has pioneered regarding grain boundaries and fracture in crystalline solids are widely recognized and are being used in simulations by leading research groups in academia, industry, and national laboratories.

Zikry has given 140 invited conference and technical presentations, published 142 refereed journal articles and 60-refereed proceedings, with 41 of these refereed journal articles being published since 2011, with the vast majority co-authored with his advisees.

Zikry joined the NC State faculty in 1990 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) immediately after completing his

Ph.D. in applied mechanics at the University of California, San Diego. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1996 and to professor in 2002. He was named the Zan Prevost Smith Distinguished Professor in 2010.

Since arriving at NC State in 1990, he has been actively involved in educating students. He has introduced a number of new graduate courses including Continuum Mechanics, Micromechanics, and Modern Plasticity. He also co-developed a course entitled Macro-Nano Modeling with materials science and engineering colleagues. In addition to supervising 18 Ph.D. graduates, 16 M.S. graduates and a number of post-doctoral associates, he has mentored 17 undergraduate research students.

His many honors and awards include the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Ralph Teetor Educational Award in 2001, the Alcoa Foundation Senior Distinguished Research Award in 2007, Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2004, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015. He is a member of several professional societies including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Active in public service for many years, Zikry has served as a Jefferson Science Fellow advising the U.S. Secretary of State and the U.S. State Department, from 2008 to present and served as senior advisor to the US Army Research Office (ARO). He serves on the Fulbright Specialist Peer Review Committee and is an advisor to the Austrian Ministry of Science. In addition, he has been an active member of the professional community by serving as the regional editor to the Journal of Mechanics of Materials (1999-present), as the editor-in chief ASME Journal of Engr Materials & Technology (2013-present) and is currently associate editor of the Handbook of Macro to Nano Damage for Materials and Structures.

He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Kansas in 1983, his M.S. in mechanical engineering with a specialization in solid mechanics from Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and his Ph.D. in applied mechanics from the University of California, San Diego in 1990.

Zikry has been a leader at the forefront of computational mechanics and modeling while making a significant impact in promoting excellence in his teaching, research and interaction with other universities and the scientific community worldwide.

His commitment to excellence makes him a deserving recipient of the R.J. Reynolds Award.