Achievement

This year, Darren Hartl completed his Ph.D. research and defended his dissertation, "Modeling of shape memory alloys considering rate-independent and rate-dependent irrecoverable strains". In the fall, he was invited to discuss modeling of shape memory alloys at a conference in Prague dedicated to these materials, sponsored in part by the ESF. In the same month he was sponsored by the University of Patras to travel to Greece and discuss his research and potential future collaborations. Dr. Hartl was awarded the Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research. Only five such awards are presented annually. Past awards include Best Student Paper at both the 2008 ASME SMASIS Conference (Ellicott City MD) and 2009 SPIE Smart Materials/NDE Conference (San Diego). Hartl and IGERT co-PI Lagoudas were also awarded the 2009 William Sweet Smith Prize (Inst. Mechanical Engineers-U.K.) for Best Paper in Aerospace Engineering.