A special symposium was held during the Society of Engineering Science’s 2022 Annual Technical meeting to honor the contributions of Brown University Professor Kyung-Suk Kim over nearly 50 years. The meeting was in-person for the first time since 2019, and was held Oct. 16-19 at Texas A&M. Organizers of the special symposium included Kim’s former graduate students Ashraf Bastawros Sc.M. ’95, Ph.D. ’97 (now a professor at Iowa State), Wendy Crone Sc.M. ’91 (now a professor at the University of Wisconsin), Ruike Renee Zhao Sc.M. ’14, Ph.D. ’16 (now an Assistant Professor at Stanford), and former Kim postdoctoral researcher Yanfei Gao (now a professor at the University of Tennessee).
The symposium was titled Experimental and Theoretical Micro- and Nano-Mechanics: Honoring the Contributions of Prof. Kyung-Suk Kim. The description of the event said “Mechanics of Solids and Structures have evolved from studies of large bodies in civil and aerospace engineering, to metallurgical microstructures, and to miniscule living or nonliving objects. A central role in studying such a multitude of material phenomena is how to bridge these scales theoretically and experimentally, and thus to provide an in-depth understanding of the mechanical behavior of micro- and nano-structures with desirable properties and design capabilities. This symposium aims to provide a platform to honor the contributions from Prof. Kyung-Suk Kim in the above topics.”
Presentations were by invitation, and topics were in accord with Kim’s nearly fifty-year experience in dynamic plasticity, fracture and failure, nano-mechanics and biomechanics. More than 25 talks and video messages were presented by Kim’s former Ph.D. students, postdocs, colleagues, and friends.
Kim received the 2012 Engineering Science Medal from the 49th Annual Technical Meeting of the SES, a prize awarded in recognition of a singularly important contribution to engineering science. At that time, the Society of Engineering Science had only awarded the Engineering Science Medal eight previous times since its inception in 1987.
Kim received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University of Korea in 1974 and 1976, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1980. He worked on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1980-1989 before returning to Brown as Professor of Engineering in 1989. He continues to direct the Nano and Micromechanics Laboratory in the Mechanics of Solids and Structures group in the School of Engineering.