10/10/2022 Julia Park
Written by Julia Park
Manufacturing engineers around the country can now be recognized with an award that honors the discoveries and achievements of two world-renowned manufacturing faculty: MechSE’s own, Professor Shiv Kapoor and the late Professor Richard (“Dick”) DeVor.
A new achievement award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the DeVor-Kapoor Manufacturing Medal recognizes an individual or a team of researchers for a body of impactful achievements in the field of manufacturing. Recipients will have demonstrated long-term contributions to at least one of the following areas: pioneering research, innovative technology development/transfer, inspirational mentorship, and ground-breaking scholarship/writings.
The award, established by the Manufacturing Engineering Division of ASME, was a years-long effort by several of the honorees’ former students and post-docs, John Sutherland (Purdue), Shreyes Melkote (Georgia Tech), Johnson Samuel (RPI), Burak Ozdoganlar (CMU), Patrick Bless (Intel), and Martin Jun (Purdue), to raise the funds necessary to financially support the award for the foreseeable future. The inaugural deadline for nominations is February 1, 2023.
“Through the generous financial support of their students, friends, and colleagues a new award has been established to recognize the many decades of distinguished technical contributions of Professors Richard E. DeVor and Shiv G. Kapoor to the field of manufacturing. Our team was extremely honored to be able to help see this award come to fruition,” said Sutherland.
This new award, the ASME DeVor-Kapoor Manufacturing Medal, seeks to recognize an individual or a team of researchers for a body of “impactful achievements in the field of manufacturing.” Manufacturing professionals from academia, industry, and national laboratories, with distinguished and sustained contributions to and impact in the manufacturing field will be eligible for this medal. The nomination materials must provide evidence of the long-term contributions in one or more of the following exemplar areas: pioneering research, innovative technology development/transfer, inspirational mentorship, and ground-breaking scholarship/writings.
Kapoor is the Grayce Wicall Gauthier Chair Emeritus in Mechanical Science and Engineering. His research focused on developing science-based understanding of manufacturing process modeling and process automation for the purpose of increasing productivity and improving quality. His group developed a new manufacturing paradigm related to micro/meso-scale mechanical manufacturing—moving toward the creation of miniaturized manufacturing equipment and processes that are integrated into autonomous “microfactories” and promoting the concept of mass customization through distributed manufacturing. He holds three degrees in mechanical engineering, including a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kapoor joined the MechSE department in 1979 as an assistant professor and retired in August 2022.
DeVor, who passed away in 2011, was the College of Engineering Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Manufacturing. He joined the Illinois faculty in 1971 and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000. In 2010, he and Kapoor were selected as co-recipients of the NAMRI/SME Wu Research Implementation Award in recognition of their innovative research on the development of mechanistic simulation models for machining processes, which they began in the early 1980s. Their simulation models commercially benefited industry by providing guidance in terms of product design and process planning, and in supporting the design of machine tool systems at both the conventional and microscales. They served as co-directors of the Machine Tool Systems Research Laboratory in MechSE.