Dasgupta Receives 2015 USM Regents' Faculty Award

The University System of Maryland (USM) awarded Department of Mechanical Engineering Jeong H. Kim Professor Abhijit Dasgupta a 2015 USM Regents' Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship. Regents' Faculty Awards publicly recognize distinguished performance on the part of USM faculty members.

"This award is particularly gratifying because it recognizes both the cumulative contributions of all the students and co-researchers on my team and the support that my team has enjoyed over the years from leadership in both Mechanical Engineering Department and the College of Engineering," said Dasgupta.

Dasgupta conducts research on the mechanics of engineered, heterogeneous, active materials, with special emphasis on the micromechanics of constitutive and damage behavior, and he applies this work to multifunctional material systems such as electronic packaging material systems and 'smart' composite material systems.

For over 20 years, Dasgupta has conducted research on Physics of Failure (PoF) approaches for developing reliable, complex multi-functional systems that perform electronic, photonic and mechanical functions, and is a researcher for the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering.

He has published over 250 journal articles and conference papers on his research, presented over 35 short workshops nationally and internationally, served on three different international journals' editorial boards, organized several national and international conferences and received six awards for his contributions in materials engineering research and education. Most recently, he was named an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fellow.

Dasgupta is the fourth Mechanical Engineering faculty member in four years USM recognized with a Regents' Faculty Award. He joins Ken Kiger, 2012 USM Regents' Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Don DeVoe, 2013 USM Regents' Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Michael Ohadi, 2014 USM Regents' Faculty Award for Excellence in Innovation.

"I am encouraged by the fact that the recipients’ list for this award has included faculty members from the Mechanical Engineering Department for the past four years," said Dasgupta. "I believe this speaks to the high quality of scholarship in this department and I look forward to congratulating more winners among my colleagues in the future."

USM Regents' Faculty Awards are the highest honor presented by the Board of Regents to exemplary faculty members. The Council of University System Faculty selects awardees and submits them to the Board of Regents for approval. The Regents will recognize this year's award recipients at a special breakfast ceremony, as well as during the public session of the full board meeting Friday, April 10, 2015 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

Published March 10, 2015