Tayfun Tezduyar, the James F. Barbour Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, has been awarded the 2023 John von Neumann Medal of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM).
The medal is given every two years to researchers who have made “outstanding, sustained contributions in the field of computational mechanics generally over periods representing substantial portions of their professional careers.” It is the highest award given by the USACM.
Tezduyar’s research interests include computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI), cardiovascular FSI, ventricle-valve-aorta flow analysis, car and tire aerodynamics, spacecraft parachute FSI, bioinspired flapping-wing aerodynamics, aerodynamics of wind turbines, thermo-fluid analysis of ground vehicles, tires and disk brakes, flow analysis of turbochargers and other turbomachinery, and the aerodynamics and structural mechanics of ram-air parachutes.
The award is “For making pioneering contributions in computational FSI and enabling FSI analysis for some of the most challenging applications such as particle-laden flows, spacecraft parachutes, and car and tire aerodynamics.”
Tezduyar joined the Rice faculty in 1998 as chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and served in that position until 2004. His many awards include the Computational Mechanics Award of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, Thomas J.R. Hughes Medal of the USACM, Computational Mechanics Award of the International Association for Computational Mechanics, Computational Mechanics Award of the Japan Association for Computational Mechanics (JACM), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award, Computational Mechanics Award of the Asian Pacific Association for Computational Mechanics, and Honorary Member Award of the JACM.
Tezduyar has published more than 275 journal articles, as indexed by the Web of Science. He was named a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in both the engineering and computer science categories in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, and in the cross-field category in 2018. According to Google Scholar, Tezduyar has been cited more than 36,000 times and has an h-index of 103. According to the Research.com 2023 Best Scientists rankings in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, his national ranking is 16 and world ranking is 25.
He served as a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and has been a joint appointment professor at Waseda University in Japan since 2017.
Tezduyar received the von Neumann Medal at the 17th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics, held July 23-27 in Albuquerque.