Geubelle named head of Department of Aerospace Engineering

Philippe H. Geubelle, a Bliss Professor in the College of Engineering at Illinois, has been named head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering (AE) at Illinois.

“I am truly excited and honored to lead this great department and to strengthen its teaching, research and service missions," Geubelle said. "I am looking forward to working with all faculty members, students and alumni to make this department even better by launching more educational initiatives and fostering research collaborations. I thank the faculty and the college administration for the trust they have placed in me.”

Geubelle, who has been serving as interim department head since October 2011, joined the AE faculty at Illinois in 1995. He also holds joint appointments in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is affiliated with the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. For the past six years, he has been serving as director of the Illinois Space Grant Consortium, a NASA-sponsored higher-education program involving a variety of institutions across the State of Illinois.

Geubelle has distinguished himself nationally and internationally as an engineer and educator in computational mechanics. His research interests pertain to the theoretical and numerical treatment of complex problems in solid mechanics, and, in particular, of fracture mechanics, multiscale modeling of heterogeneous, granular and layered materials, composite manufacturing processes and computational design of novel biomimetic materials. Other research activities involve computational aeroelasticity, structural/acoustic fatigue, and parallel programming. His current research projects are supported by the Boeing Company, AFOSR, AFRL, ARO, NSF, and the Industrial Research Institute.

A (co-)author of about 90 peer-reviewed papers and 40 conference papers, Geubelle received the 2007 Best Paper of the Year Award from the Materials Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In 2009, he was elected ASME Fellow. Over his seventeen-year career at the University of Illinois, he has received various departmental and college awards for excellence in research, teaching and advising.

Originally from Belgium, Geubelle earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1988 from the Catholic University of Louvain, and his master’s degree and PhD in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology in 1989 and 1993, respectively. He joined the AE department in January 1995 following a postdoc at Harvard. Prior to becoming interim department head, Geubelle had been associate department head, overseeing AE graduate programs.
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Writer: Susan Mumm, editor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, 217/244-5382.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.