Kon-Well Wang
Dr. Kon-Well Wang is the Stephen P. Timoshenko Professor Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985, worked at the General Motors Research Labs as a Senior Research Engineer, and started his academic career as a faculty at the Pennsylvania State University in 1988. During his Penn State years, Professor Wang has served as the William E. Diefenderfer Chaired Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Director of the Structural Dynamics and Controls Lab, Co-Founder and Associate Director of the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence, and Group Leader for the Center for Acoustics and Vibration. Dr. Wang joined the University of Michigan in 2008 and served as the Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering from 2008 to 2018. He has also been the Division Director of the Engineering Education and Centers Division at the National Science Foundation for two years, 2019 and 2020, via an Executive Intergovernmental Personnel Act appointment.
Professor Wang’s main technical interests are in adaptive structural systems and structural dynamics & controls. He has received various recognitions for his accomplishments, such as the Pi Tau Sigma-ASME Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award, the ASME J.P. Den Hartog Award, the SPIE Smart Structures and Materials Lifetime Achievement Award, the ASME Adaptive Structures and Materials Systems Prize, the ASME N.O. Myklestad Award, the ASME Adaptive Structures and Material Systems Best Paper Awards, the ASME Rudolf Kalman Award, the NASA Tech Brief Award, and the SAE Ralph Teetor Award. His major leadership activities in the professional community include being Chair of the ASME Technical Committee on Vibration and Sound, Chair of the ASME Mechanical Engineering Department Heads Executive Committee, General Chair of the SPIE Damping and Isolation Conference and of the ARO Workshop on Smart Structures. Dr. Wang has been the Editor in Chief for the ASME Journal of Vibration & Acoustics. He is currently an Editorial Board Member or an Associate Editor for five journals and/or book series, and is a member of the ASME Technical Committee on Publications and Communications, which has supervision of activities concerning the dissemination of technical information associated with all ASME Transactions Journals, Conference Publications, and Books. Dr. Wang is a Fellow of the ASME, AAAS, and IOP.