THE GRIFFITH MEDAL

Professor Bhushan Karihaloo

"For his outstanding research in the field of theoretical fracture mechanics and fracture of quasi-brittle materials, in particular of concrete, fibre-reinforced cementitious composites, and advanced tough ceramics"

Bhushan Lal Karihaloo received his BE degree with First Class Honours and Gold Medal from the University of Ranchi, MTech in Structural Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, PhD from Moscow Civil Engineering University, and DEng from the University of Sydney. Prior to his present appointment, he has held chairs at the University of Newcastle, NSW, the University of Sydney, and Aalborg University, Denmark, besides visiting appointments at Northwestern University, Oxford University, Essen University, Germany, The Technical University of Denmark and The EC Center of Excellence on Advanced Materials, Warsaw.

He is the owner of a British patent on CARDIFRC, has authored two books on fracture mechanics of concrete and ceramics, co-edited 11 books on structural optimisation and integrity, and written nearly 400 technical papers in refereed journals and proceedings. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the 10-volume Comprehensive Structural Integrity, published by Elsevier in 2003 which received the Best Engineering Reference award from the American Society for Engineering Education in 2004.

He is a member of the editorial boards of nine international journals, and an Associate Editor of the journal of Mechanics of Materials and of The International Journal of Fracture.

He is an Honorary Member of the Czech Society of Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences since 1989, and an Honorary Fellow of the International Congress on Fracture since 2001.

He is Vice-President of the International Congress on Fracture (ICF), chair of the Royal Society UK National Panel for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, member of the Congress Committee of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), and Chairman of Technical Committee 9 on Fracture of Concrete of the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS).

THE WÖHLER MEDAL

Professor Robert Ritchie

“For his outstanding research to the understanding of fatigue crack growth behavior”

Robert O. Ritchie is the H.T. & Jessie Chua Distinguished Professor of Engineering, and Chairman of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Senior Faculty Scientist and Head of Ceramic Materials in the Materials Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a member of the University of California San Francisco/University of California Berkeley Bioengineering group. He received a B.A. degree in physics and metallurgy in 1969, the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science in 1973, and the Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) degree in 1990, all from Cambridge University. Following periods as the Goldsmith's Research Fellow in Materials Science at Churchill College, Cambridge (1972-74) and as a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California in Berkeley (1974-76), he was an Assistant Professor and then the Class of 1922 Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. (1977-81). In 1981, he returned to Berkeley where he has been Professor of Materials Science since 1982; he was also Deputy Director of the Materials Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1990-94), and Director of the Center for Advanced Materials there from 1987 to 1995. Dr. Ritchie is well known for his research in the fields of materials science, fracture mechanics and particularly fatigue, having authored or co-authored over 550 papers and edited 17 books in the technical literature. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S. and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in the UK. He was President of the International Congress on Fracture (ICF) from 1997-2001, and is a Fellow of ICF, TMS, the Institute of Materials, the Institute of Physics, and the American Society for Materials.
E-mail: roritchie@lbl.gov

AWARD OF MERIT

Professor Andrzej Neimitz

“For his outstanding contributions to the field of fracture and his work devoted to the advancement of the European Structural Integrity Society”

Prof. Andrzej Neimitz is the Professor of Kielce University of Technology (KUT) and the chairman of the Fundamentals of Machine Design Chair in the Mechatronics and Machine Design Faculty. He was the Rector of the KUT (1990-1996)and the Dean of the Mechanical Engineering Faculty (1987-1990). He received the MSc diploma (1971) from the Academy of Mining and Metalurgy, Cracow, PhD degree (1976) from KUT, DSc – habilitation degree (1986) from the Institute of Fundamental Research Problems of Polish Academy of Sciences and the Title of Professor (1995)-national title. He published 125 papers in the field of Fracture Mechanics on the topics: fast crack growth, fracture in the creep conditions, hydrogen assisted cracking, subcritical crack growth, in- and out-of-plane constraint, structural integrity analysis. He received the IREX scholarship to visit the Northwestern University, Evanston, USA for seven months (1979-1980), spent twenty months at Michigan Technological University, Houghton, USA as a visiting professor (1984,1985), visited EMPA, Dubendorf for six weeks as an international research fellow (1989) and he spent six weeks at Imperial College, London receiving the Tempus scholarship. He has been a member of the Committee of Mechanics of the Polish Academy of Sciences since 1987, the President of Polish Group of Fracture since 1987. He is a member of Council and Vice-president of ESIS; in the past he was a member of Nomination Committee and Award Committee. He was a chairman of many Organizing and Scientific Committees of national and international scientific conferences; among them he was the Co-chairman of ECF 14. He is a member of Associate Editorial Board of Journal of Materials Science and Technology of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as well as the member of Editorial Boards of: Physicochemical Mechanics of Materials - Journal of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping, Engineering Transaction - Journal of Polish Academy of Sciences- till 2003, The Archives of Mechanical Engineering - Journal of Polish Academy of Sciences, Przeglad Mechaniczny – Polish national journal for engineers and researchers.

HONORARY MEMBERSHIP

Professor Leslie Banks-Sills

“For her many valuable contributions to the field of fracture mechanics and for her good service to the international fracture mechanics community”

Leslie Banks-Sills is a Professor at Tel Aviv University in the Department of Solid Mechanics, Materials and Systems where she directs the Dreszer Fracture Mechanics Laboratory. She received an M.Sc. degree in applied mechanics from the University of Michigan in 1973 and a Ph.D. degree in engineering in 1977 from Harvard University. After post-doctoral work at Brown University, she joined the staff at Tel Aviv University in 1979. Since 2001, she is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. She has consulted for many industries including NASA, the Israel Armed Forces, and Israel Aircraft Industries. For eight years, she served as the Chair of her department at Tel Aviv University. She serves on the Executive Committee of the International Congress of Fracture and was recently elected as one of the Vice Presidents of ESIS. She is an Honorary Fellow of the International Congress of Fracture, received the Hanin Prize from the Technion in 2006 for ou tstanding work in aeronautical engineering and is an Honorary Member of ESIS. She currently holds the Lise Meitner Chair at Lund University in Sweden. Her research interests include analytical, numerical, and experimental aspects of fracture mechanics focusing, particularly, on metals, composite and anisotropic materials, as well as interface fracture. She has guided 33 graduate and post-graduate students and published over 75 papers in international journals. You may view her web page at: http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~leslie.