Chen Receives Presidential Award
Associate Professor Xi Chen of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics was honored at special White House ceremonies as a recipient of the highest honor that any young scientist or engineer can receive in the United States, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He was among 67 researchers selected for the award for 2007. In ceremonies on Dec. 19, presided over by Dr. John H. Marburger III, Science Advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Prof. Chen had the opportunity to meet President George W. Bush.
Chen was nominated for the Presidential Early Career Award by the National Science Foundation (NSF) "in recognition for his outstanding research involving mismatch damages in thin-films and nano-scale self-assembly; and for his elaborate education and outreach activities, including summer programs for under-represented high school students."
In accepting the award at separate ceremonies held by the NSF, Prof. Chen said, "I am humbled, thrilled, and honored to receive the PECASE award, especially as a nominee of the National Science Foundation. I wish to thank my group members, collaborators, friends, and colleagues, and, from now on, I will have even more motivation to stand in the forefront of engineering mechanics."
The Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), established in 1996, honors the most promising researchers in the nation within their fields. Nine federal departments and agencies annually nominate scientists and engineers who are at the outset of their independent careers and whose work shows exceptional promise for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Participating agencies award these talented scientists and engineers with up to five years of funding to further their research in support of critical government missions.
Prof. Chen's areas of research expertise include mechanobiology, novel materials addressing challenges in energy and environment, nanomechanics, nanoindentation, mechanical self-assembly, small material structures, and multi-scale and multi-phase computational mechanics. He joined Columbia University in 2003 as an Assistant Professor after receiving his PhD and postdoctoral training from Harvard University. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed journal papers, many of which were in high-impact journals and several were featured as cover stories.
He has given more than 110 presentations in conferences and seminars. One of his most recent published papers was on stress-driven buckling patterns in spheroidal core/shell structures, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Nov. 17. Nature News reported his findings in an article entitled, Why Fruits Are Groovy. His PhD student Ling Liu received the highest student award in mechanics in the United States as the sole winner in 2008 of the Founder Prize of the American Academy of Mechanics. Chen is the chair of Multifunctional Materials of ASME, and an Associate Editor of Mechanics Research Communications.