IMECE Technical Program Features Track Plenary Sessions, Award Lectures and More

This year’s International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) — the Society’s largest research and development conference focused primarily on mechanical engineering, but encompassing perspectives from many engineering disciplines — is just several weeks away.

The conference, which will take place from Nov. 8-14 at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, is expected to bring together more than 2,000 engineers from industry, academia, government agencies, research institutes and other areas to present their latest research and to learn from and connect with their colleagues and peers from around the world.

The technical program for IMECE 2019 will encompass more than 470 sessions across 18 technical tracks covering topics such as acoustics, vibration and phononics; advanced manufacturing; advances in aerospace technology; biomedical and biotechnology engineering; dynamics, vibration and control; energy; engineering education; fluids engineering; heat transfer and thermal engineering; advanced materials (design, processing, characterization and applications); mechanics of solids, structures and fluids; micro- and nano-systems engineering and packaging; safety engineering, risk and reliability analysis; and design, systems and complexity.

Three of the tracks will feature poster session presentations: the ASME International Undergraduate Research and Design Expo, the National Science Foundation track (including the NSF Student Poster Competition), and the Virtual Podium.

More than 20 track plenary sessions will be presented during the weeklong IMECE program. Scheduled plenaries include “Using Additive Manufacturing to Advance Designs in Convective Cooling” by ASME Board of Governors member Karen Thole of Pennsylvania State University; “System Resilience: Definitions, Quantification and Associated Economics” by ASME Honorary Member Bilal Ayyub of the University of Maryland, “Data-Driven Model Reduction and Probabilistic Learning for Digital Twins” by Charbel Farhat of Stanford University’s Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering; “Nanowarming for Regenerative Medicine” by John Bischof of the University of Minnesota; “Integrated Soft Materials” by Zhigang Suo of Harvard University; “Design for Additive Manufacturing: Opportunities and Challenges” by David Rosen of Singapore University of Technology & Design and Georgia Institute of Technology; and “The Role of Lean Education in Preparing Future Workforce: Closing the Academic and Professional Gap” by Anabela Alves of the University of Minho in Portugal.

Other speakers presenting track plenary sessions at IMECE 2019 include Steve Shaw from Florida Institute of Technology, Anna Stefanopoulou of the University of Michigan, Chang-Jin Kim from the University of California, Los Angeles, William Parnell of the University of Manchester, Lyle E. Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Brigid Mullany of the National Science Foundation. In addition, Kai Goebel of the System Sciences Lab at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) will present the Conference Wide Symposium, titled “Failure Is Not an Option: Avoiding Operational Disruptions with Mechanistic and Data-Driven Damage Prognostics.”

The IMECE program will also include special lectures featuring this year’s winners of several ASME awards: The Materials Division’s Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award Lecture, presented by Sinan Keten, the June and Donald Brewer Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University; The Materials Division’s Nadai Medal Award Lecture, given by Ellen M. Arruda, the Tim Manganello/BorgWarner Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan; the Applied Mechanics Koiter Lecture, presented by K.T. Ramesh, the Alonzo G. Decker Jr. Professor of Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University; the Robert Henry Thurston Lecture, delivered by Yonggang Huang, the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Northwestern University; and the Noise Control and Acoustics Division’s Rayleigh Lecture, presented by Earl H. Dowell, the William Holland Hall Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at  Duke University.

To view the full IMECE 2019 technical program, visit event.asme.org/IMECE/Program. For more information on the ASME 2019 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, or to register, visit event.asme.org/IMECE.