September 10, 2014
The International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) has awarded ASE/EM Professor Leszek Demkowicz the IACM Computational Mechanics Award for contributions to the discipline.
Demkowicz is assistant director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) and holds the J.H. Herring Centennial Professor in aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics. He is leader of the ICES Electromagnetics and Acoustics Group, and a member of the ICES Multiscale Modeling Group.
He earned Ph.D. and Sc.D. degrees in mechanics from Cracow University of Technology, Poland. Prior to joining The University of Texas at Austin faculty, he held various positions at Cracow University of Technology.
Demkowicz authored a monograph on adaptive methods (in Polish, 1986), co-authored with Prof. J.T. Oden a textbook on functional analysis (CRS Press, 1996, second edition - 2010) and co-edited three books. He has also authored more than 150 journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and technical reports in the general area of computational mechanics and computational mathematics. He is associate editor of seven international journals. He was the founding member of the Polish Association for Computational Mechanics and served as its first president. He is a fellow of both U.S. and International Associations for Computational Mechanics and a member of several other professional organizations.
His work and scientific interests span numerical analysis, adaptive finite element methods, and wave propagation problems, including acoustics, elastodynamics and electromagnetics. Among other applications, Demkowicz and his group developed original numerical methods based on hp-adaptive finite and boundary element methods with applications to structural vibrations, analysis of acoustics of the human ear, dynamic modeling of gears, analysis of optical waveguides, calculation of radar cross-sections, borehole electromagnetics, and acoustics. His work has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Energy, Schlumberger, Baker-Hughes, and Boeing.
His research has been summarized in a two-volume monograph “Computing with hp-Adaptive Finite Elements” published by Chapman & Hall/CRC in 2006 and 2007. For his research on higher order methods, he has received the Zienkiewicz Medal from the Polish Association for Computational Mechanics, the Computational Science Award from the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics, and the ICES Distinguished Research Award.
