UA Engineering Professor Named Fellow by ASME

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Stanley E. Jones, the James R. Cudworth Professor and University Research Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at The University of Alabama, was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME.

Jones was elected for both his research contributions as well as his accomplishments as an educator. He is one of only 3,252 of the ASME’s more than 106,000 members to be elected as a Fellow.

It is the highest honor offered to ASME members who have made significant contributions to the field of engineering, along with dedicating at least 10 years of active service to the society.

He has made outstanding research contributions in several important areas of mechanics. His fundamental contributions in hydraulic surge control and pressure generation resulted in one of the first analytical solutions to this class of problems.

His work on analytical modeling of viscoplastic material response and necking in bars and plates helped provide the mathematical tools for the analytical prediction of forming limit diagrams. He later made significant contributions to Taylor Impact Testing, penetration mechanics and the interpretation of Taylor cylinder test data.

Jones’ research resulted in the construction of the Impact and Penetration Mechanics Laboratory at UA. In this facility, students designed experiments, reduced data and wrote papers related to terminal ballistics. One of his undergraduate students was selected as UA’s first Portz Scholar by the National Collegiate Honors Council for his paper on high speed friction and wear of rod penetrators in concrete targets.

Jones was also co-author of a book that comprehensively addressed variational formulation of nonconservative problems for the first time in 1989.

He pioneered contributions in the development of online distance learning, co-authoring two books and developing companion interactive courses in linear and nonlinear partial differential equations.

Jones, who came to UA in 1987 as the head of the engineering mechanics department, was named University Research Professor in 1990. In 2001, he was named the James R. Cudworth Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics. He became head of the department of aerospace engineering and mechanics in 2006 before stepping down in December 2012.

He received the Charles Henry Radcliff Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching in Engineering Science and Mechanics in 2002. He was also awarded the Outstanding Professor in the College of Distance Education in 2004 and the Outstanding Commitment to Teaching award from the UA Alumni Association in 2005.

In 1837, The University of Alabama became one of the first five universities in the nation to offer engineering classes. Today, UA’s fully accredited College of Engineering has more than 3,900 students and more than 110 faculty. In the last eight years, students in the College have been named USA Today All-USA College Academic Team members, Goldwater, Hollings, Mitchell, Portz and Truman scholars.