Greetings fellow EMI Members!
It is an honor to succeed Prof. Spanos and other previous illustrious leaders as President of EMI. By way of introduction, I am at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA. I work in the areas of probabilistic mechanics, risk and reliability, uncertainty quantification, structural health monitoring, and optimization under uncertainty. Within EMI, I have previously served as Chair of the Probabilistic Methods Committee, as Associate Editor of JEM, as member of the Board of Governors, and as Co‐Chair of the 2016 EMI‐PMC Conference at Vanderbilt University.
As the pandemic hopefully recedes in the coming year, I look forward to the EMI community bouncingforward, including our flagship EMI conference (to be held at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, during May 31‐June 3, 2022), and international conferences (two in 2023 – one at Ghent University, Belgium and one at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China), expanded technical committee activities and student paper competitions, expansion of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics (with several special issues and the start of a new Special Section on Nanomechanics and Micromechanics), and a new early career mentoring program for junior faculty. All this is being accompanied by a newly designed website; please visit the website from time to time!
I am excited to welcome Prof. Franz Ulm (MIT) as the new Editor‐in‐Chief of JEM, and offer him and the JEM Editorial team our best wishes for continued success. On behalf of all of you, I also express our profound gratitude to Prof. Roberto Ballarini for the outstanding leadership of the journal and bringing it to a remarkable level of prominence and impact. It is also my distinct pleasure to recognize the tremendous assets we have in Dr. Amar Chaker and Verna Jameson, who have provided tireless, cheerful and outstanding service to EMI since its founding.
Our community has seen a steep rise during the past decade, in terms of both quality and quantity, thanks to your hard work, excellence and visionary leadership. I will need all your help and support to continue on this successful path and carry forward the good work done by past presidents. Please feel free to provide your suggestions and advice on how the EMI Board of Governors and the technical committees can continue to improve their service to the EMI community. I wish you all a healthy and productive year and look forward to seeing you in person in Baltimore!
Sankaran Mahadevan, Ph.D., F.EMI, M.ASCE
Vanderbilt University
EMI President (2021-2023)