2/27/2023 Julia Park
Written by Julia Park
MechSE professor Katie Matlack was named one of this year’s recipients of The Grainger College of Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research. She won in the assistant professor category.
The award honors faculty who have demonstrated an outstanding record of research achievements and publications during academic year 2021-2022.
Matlack was one of two from MechSE in the assistant professor category, a first for the department.
Matlack leads the Wave Propagation and Metamaterials Laboratory, where her research group works to understand how waves propagate in complex materials over several length scales, which they then use to study how waves propagate in materials, to design efficient and multi-functional materials, structures, and devices. Her research is at the intersection of mechanical wave propagation, materials, vibrations, and mechanics, and focuses on two thrusts: (1) developing new models and experiments to study the relationship between structure and mechanical and dynamic properties such as in phononic (periodic) media and mechanical metamaterials, and (2) studying the interaction between ultrasonic waves and microstructure of materials to develop new nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques. She made several critical research contributions in academic year 2021-2022 that advanced the fields of ultrasonics, phononic materials, and the effects of nonlinearity on wave propagation in materials.
Her work has been published in the top journals in her field and she has been recognized by the scientific community for her early accomplishments with an NSF CAREER Award and the Journal of Applied Mechanics Award, both in 2021, along with several significant research funding wins.
She will be formally recognized at the college’s Faculty Awards Ceremony on April 24.