UCI Distinguished Professor Satya Atluri Recognized with AIAA Crichlow Trust Prize

The American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) announced in August that UCI Distinguished Professor Satya Atluri has been selected to receive the Walter J. and Angeline H. Crichlow Trust Prize, one of the AIAA’s most prestigious awards. Presented every four years, the prize recognizes an individual for a specific achievement or body of work that has become significant during the immediate past 15 years. The prize carries an honorarium of $100,000.

Atluri has conducted groundbreaking mathematical work, including inventing the so-called “meshless method” that has aided the design of safer materials and structures used in aircraft. Throughout his career, Atluri’s work has encompassed theoretical, applied and computational mechanics of solids and fluids; and structural longevity, failure prevention and health management.

Atluri earned the Crichlow Prize “for lasting contributions to airframe structural integrity and durability analysis using novel computational methods (MLPG meshless methods) and micromechanics of materials genome.” He will receive the honor at the AAIA Science and Technology Forum in January in Florida.

“It feels well to be recognized but I should recognize and thank those who really made it possible: my wife, my students, the mechanical and aerospace engineering department and UCI, which maintains such a beautiful campus where all my worthwhile ideas are generated during my daily walks.”

Atluri most recently was inducted as a 2014 corresponding member of the Academy of Athens, Greece, in the section of physical sciences, and he was recognized the previous year with India’s third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan. He also was noted in as among the world’s leading scientific minds, according to the 2014 Highly Cited Researchers list published in June by Thomson Reuters.