Ares J. Rosakis


Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He was also the fifth Director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, known as, and formerly known as Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, and was the Otis Booth Leadership Chair, of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science.

Education and career

Ares Rosakis graduated from Athens College, a Greek American high school, in June 1975. He received both his Bachelors and Masters of Arts degrees from Oxford University. He received his SCM and PhD degrees in engineering from Brown University. He began at the California Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in 1982. He named associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1993. In 2004, he was named the “Theodore von Kármán Professor” of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
He served as Interim Director and Director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories formerly known as the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories.
In 2005, Rosakis was a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Dept. of Terre Atmosphére-Océan, École Normale Supérieure Paris, France. In 2008, he held the prestigious Astor Visiting Professorship at the University of Oxford. In early 2018 he held a Distinguished Simpson Visiting Professorship at Northwestern University and a Distinguished Nanyang Visiting Professorship at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Between 2009 and 2015, he was Chair of the at Caltech. In June 2013, Rosakis was named the F. Otis Booth Leadership Chair in addition to his academic, Theodore von Kármán, chair. Rosakis was the first holder of such a Leadership Chair at Caltech. Between 2009 and 2015 he also served as a member of all three of Caltech's Governing bodies, the Institute's Academic Council, the Institute's Administrative Council, as an Ex-Officio Member of the Institutes’ Faculty Board and between 2005 and 2014 as member of JPL’s Advisory council.
Rosakis is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering. As such, he is one of only seventy living Americans to be elected to membership in both the NAS and the NAE branches of the US National Academies. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as five more Academies in Europe and India: Indian National Academy of Engineering, Academia Europaea, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Academy of Athens, European Academy of Science.

Honors and awards

Rosakis has been honored with various recognitions in many branches of Engineering and Science including, Reliability of Materials, Optics and Instrumentation design, Failure of Solid Materials with applications in micro-electronics, Aerospace and Civil Engineering structures and in Earthquake Source Mechanics.
  • 2021 - Received the Zdenek Bazant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention “For ground breaking contributions to Earthquake Mechanics, specifically for inventing “laboratory Earthquakes” which have transformed our understanding of failure and damage processes in the Earth that have proven central to infrastructure damage prevention”. This medal is the only recognition exclusively devoted to the field of materials failure.
  • 2021 - Recipient of the Horace Mann Medal “For his research and mentoring skills, as well as being a champion of societal impact that can be realized through the sciences”, and was a 2021 Commencement Forum speaker at Brown University.
  • 2020 - Elected member of the .
  • 2019 - Awarded the Aurel Stodola Medal from ETH Zurich.
  • 2018 - Received the Stephen P. Timoshenko Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, “For pioneering contributions to the mechanics of dynamic failure of geological materials and systems, earthquake source physics and seismic hazard mitigation”. The Timoshenko Medal is the flagship award in the field of Mechanics of Materials and one of ASME's oldest and highest honors.
  • 2017 - Elected honorary International Congress on Fracture fellow.
  • 2017 - Elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
  • 2017 - Elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union for “For monumental achievements in the field of experimental fracture dynamics that have transformed our understanding of earthquake rupture processes”.
  • 2016 - Received the Theodore von Kármán Medal from the American Society of Civil Engineers for “discovering several fundamental physical phenomena in dynamic fracture of heterogeneous materials and interfaces at various length and time scales”. This Medal is ASCE's highest recognition.
  • 2016 - Elected member of US National Academy of Sciences.
  • 2015 - Given the Sia Nemat-Nasser Medal from the same society “for his interdisciplinary utilization of experimental mechanics to advance other fields of science, in particular Earthquake Source Mechanics”.
  • 2014 - Elected member of Academia Europaea.
  • 2013 - Received the P.S. Theocaris Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics “for his lifelong contribution to experimental science and mechanics”.
  • 2013 - Elected foreign fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering.
  • 2013 - Elected member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
  • 2013 - Elected corresponding Member of Academy of Athens.
  • 2012 - Made Commander of the Order of Academic Palms by the Prime Minister of the Republic of France “for his eminent contribution to French Engineering and Technical Education”.
File:Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques recipient Ares Rosakis.jpg|thumb|Acting Caltech President Edward M. Stolper, JPL Director Charles Elachi, Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques recipient Rosakis, and Consul General of France in Los Angeles, Axel Cruau
  • 2011 - Received the A.C. Eringen Medal from the Society of Engineering Science.
  • 2011 - Elected member of US National Academy of Engineering.
  • 2010 - Awarded the Brown Engineering Alumnus Medal and the Robert Henry Thurston Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
  • 2009 - Elected Society for Experimental Mechanics fellow for having made significant accomplishments to the field of mechanics.
  • 2009 - Elected fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  • 2007 - Received the D.R. Harting Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics for the "Best Paper" published in Experimental Mechanics.
  • 2005 - Received the William M. Murray Medal and Lecture “for his life-long contributions to the development and application of advanced methods for accurate measurement of transient, dynamic phenomena”.
  • 2003 - Received the Frocht Award, which recognizes “outstanding achievement as an educator in the field of experimental mechanics”.
  • 1996 - Awarded the B. L. Lazan Award recognizing individuals who have made outstanding original technical contributions to experimental mechanics.
  • 1992 - Received the Hetényi Award, an honor given for the best research paper published in Experimental Mechanics.
  • 1989 - Awarded the Rudolf Kingslake Medal and Prize from the International Society of Optical Engineering for his work in designing optical diagnostics.
  • 1985 - Received the U.S. Presidential Young Investigator Award.

    Research

Rosakis is the author of more than 260 works on quasi-static and dynamic failure of metals, composites, interfaces and micro-electronic structures, with emphasis on the use of high speed visible and IR diagnostics and laser interferometry for the study of thermal fatigue, catastrophic failure and dynamic localization. His early work includes the study of dynamic, ductile failure of structural metals by using high speed photography, the real-time measurement of temperature fields at the vicinity of dynamically growing cracks and adiabatic shear bands and the development of a variety of optical and dynamic infrared diagnostic methods. He and his coworkers invented Coherent Gradient Sensing, CGS, interferometry, a method sensitive to gradients of optical path gradients which has been used in both fracture mechanics and thin film stress and reliability measurements at the wafer level. Other interests include dynamic fragmentation; shear dominated intersonic rupture of inhomogeneous materials and composites, rupture mechanics of crustal earthquakes, shielding of spacecraft from hypervelocity micrometeoroid impact threats, the reliability of thin films and wafer level optical metrology. Rosakis holds thirteen US patents on thin-film stress measurement and in situ wafer level metrology as well as on high speed infrared thermography.
In the late eighties, Rosakis introduced the concept of "laboratory earthquakes" and since then his research interests have included on the mechanics of seismology, the physics of dynamic shear rupture and frictional sliding and on laboratory seismology. The goal of this body of work is to create, in a controlled and repeatable environment, surrogate laboratory earthquake scenarios mimicking various dynamic shear rupture process occurring in natural earthquake events. Such, highly instrumented, experiments are used to observe new physical phenomena and to also create benchmark comparisons with existing analysis and field observations. The experiments use high-speed photography, full-field photoelasticity, digital image correlation and laser velocimetry as diagnostics. The fault systems are simulated using two photoelastic plates held together in frictional contact. The far field tectonic loading is simulated by pre-compression while the triggering of dynamic rupture is achieved by suddenly dropping the normal stress in a small region along the interface. The frictional interface forms various angles with the compression axis to provide the shear driving force necessary for continued rupturing. Rosakis and his co-workers, investigate the characteristics of rupture, such as rupture speed, rupture mode, associated ground motion under various conditions such as tectonic load, interface complexity and roughness. File:Supershear crack, Rupture speed 2368ms.gif|thumb|center|400px|A Dynamic shear rupture, is captured propagating along a frictional interface between two elastic plates at supershear speeds. The images are created by using high-speed, digital photography and Digital Image Correlation. DIC identifies gray level patterns in small pixel subsets and tracks their motion. Both homogeneous and bimaterial interfaces are investigated. Rosakis and his coworkers have been credited with the experimental discovery of the "intersonic" or "supershear rupture" phenomenon. They also have investigated this new phenomenon in various engineering and geophysical settings involving shear dominated rupture in the presence of weak interfaces or faults. Their experimental discoveries of supershear rupture has refocused the attention of the geophysics community to the study of supershear earthquakes.
Another recent research interest for Rosakis is hypervelocity impact. Hypervelocity impact is a rising concern in spacecraft missions where man-made debris in low Earth orbit and meteoroids are capable of compromising or depleting the structural integrity of spacecraft. To address these concerns, the goal of current research is to experimentally investigate the underlying mechanisms responsible for deformation and damage evolution during hypervelocity impact utilizing Caltech/JPL's Small Particle Hypervelocity Impact Range facility. By combining high speed photography, optical, spectroscopic and infrared techniques, including Coherent Gradient Sensing interferometry, the dynamic perforation behavior involving crater morphology, debris and ejecta formation and solid/fluid/plasma transitions and interactions have been examined.