Robert J. Melosh Medal
The Robert J. Melosh Medal 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. In a professional career that included working at Boeing, Philco-Ford Laboratory, and MARC Analysis and Research Corporation, as well as teaching at Rensselaer Polytechniv Institute, the University of Washington, Virginia Tech, and Duke University, Professor Melosh made significant and varied contributions to the finite element method. The Competition was established in view of his body of work, and aims to reflect Professor Melosh's dedication to the education of young engineers and researchers by providing a forum for student researchers to present their work and interact with each other and with leading researchers in the field. The winner of the Competition, as determined on the basis of a submitted extended abstract and oral presentation of the paper, receives the Robert J. Melosh Medal and a $500 honorarium.
The Competition is conducted in two primary phases. Initially, extended abstracts are reviewed by a panel of distinguished researchers in computational mechanics. Based on this review process, the top six papers are selected as finalists, and their student authors are invited to participate in the second phase of the competition, a symposium at Duke University. The symposium features lectures by the members of the distinguished judging panel, as well as talks by all the selected finalists. The Elsevier page with the LaTeX class file elsarticle.cls is available here.
The names of the recipients of this medal are inscribed on a plaque displayed in the Duke University Engineering building, as well as being listed below.
| Year | Recipient(s) |
| 2013 | Ju Liu, University of Texas, Austin |
| 2011 | Daniel Hurtado, Caltech |
| 2010 | Phanish Suryanarayana, Caltech |
| 2009 | Robert B. Gracie, Northwestern University |
| 2008 | Ludovic Chamoin, ENS de Cachan |
| Irina Kalashnikova, Stanford University | |
| 2007 | Michael Hain, Leibniz University Hannover |
| Vikram Gavini, Caltech | |
| 2006 | Honayoun Heidari, North Carolina State University |
| 2005 | Mahmoud I. Hussein, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor |
| 2004 | Juan Pablo Pontaza, Texas A&M University |
| 2003 | Prasanna Raghavan, Ohio State University |
| 2002 | Ulrich Hetmaniuk, University of Colorado, Boulder |
| 2001 | Xiaonong Meng, Duke University |
| 2000 | Aleksander Czekanski, University of Toronto |
| 1999 | John E. Dolbow, Northwestern University |
| 1998 | Serge Prudhomme, University of Texas, Austin |
| 1997 | Jerome M. Solberg, University of California, Berkeley |
| 1996 | David C. Winkler, University of Connecticut |
| 1995 | Victor G. Oancea, Duke University |
| James R. Stewart, Stanford University | |
| 1994 | Jinmiao Zhang, Ohio State Univerisity |
| 1993 | Bhaskar Joshi, University of Saskatchewan |
| 1992 | C.R. Swaminathan, University of Minnesota |
| 1991 | Alonso Pena, I.T.E.S.M. Monterrey, Mexico |
| Juan B. Sainz, I.T.E.S.M. Monterrey, Mexico | |
| 1990 | Ricardo F. Barbosa, University of Illinois |
| 1989* | H. Allison Smith, Duke University |
| R.G. Wan, University of Alberta |
*Medal established.
A list of all judges for the competition is provided here.
