Zikry appointed Zan Prevost Smith Distinguished Professor

Dr. Mohammed A. Zikry, professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, has been appointed the inaugural Zan Prevost Smith Distinguished Professor in Mechanical Engineering.

The professorship was established in 2005 by Carl M. Smith to benefit mechanical engineering and to honor his son, Zan Prevost Smith, who received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from NC State in 1965, 1968 and 1977, respectively.

A member of the NC State faculty since 1990, Zikry is a leading expert in the multiscale computational modeling of systems, fracture mechanics, crystalline plasticity, functional nano and micro device design, dynamic material behavior and experimental mechanics.  He has been celebrated for seminal research in developing physically based models of plasticity and fracture by incorporating continuum dislocation descriptions and elucidating the roles of microstructural features, such as grain-boundaries, dispersed particles and precipitates within crystalline metals, alloys and intermetallics.

Among his many honors, Zikry has received the Alcoa Senior Research Award, the Ralph Teetor Educational Award from the Society of Automotive Engineering and the DuPont Young Faculty Development Award.  He is a member of Sigma Xi, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Materials Research Society and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Zikry was named an ASME International Fellow in 2004 and is chair of the ASME Materials Division’s Executive Committee. He was honored with one of the highest French academic distinctions as Professeur, Premiere Classe, Troiseme Echelon at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France in 2004 and received the Senior Fulbright Research Award in 2005. In addition, Zikry was named a Jefferson Science Fellow by the US Department of State in 2008.

Zikry serves as the regional editor for the Journal of Mechanics of Materials and is a key reader on the editorial board for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions.

Zikry received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kansas in 1983 and his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. He earned his doctoral degree in applied mechanics from the University of California-San Diego in 1990.