ASCE has honored Huajian Gao, Ph.D., Aff.M.ASCE, with the 2022 Zdeněk P. Bazant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention for his contributions to fracture mechanics and failure prevention in nanostructured materials, including metals, metamaterials, and battery electrodes.
Gao is one of the most talented, insightful, and prolific scientists of his generation. He has made a continuing series of seminal contributions in the areas of 1) mechanism-based strain gradient plasticity; 2) fast crack growth in brittle materials; 3) crack propagation in composites; 4) nonlinear theory of peiozoelectric facture; and 5) design of multiscale hierarchical materials systems inspired by biology.
He is a distinguished leader in his field, as well. He is serving as a member of the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME and the U.S. National Committee of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics, and is past-president of the Society of Engineering Science. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Mechanics of Physics and Solids.
The award may be made in even-numbered years to an individual whose career demonstrates significant contributions to the engineering science of failure and damage prevention in the form of a scientific paper, book, patent, or other forms of scientific invention.
