Vance Coffman Faculty Chair Professor of Aerospace Engineering Dr. Valery Levitas was officially honored as Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering in the recent university award ceremony.
Levitas was named to receive the Marston designation in May of 2018. The title of Distinguished Professor is the highest academic honor the university bestows. It recognizes a faculty member whose accomplishments in research or creative activities have had a significant impact on his or her discipline, and who has demonstrated outstanding performance in at least one other area of faculty responsibility.
In addition to his faculty position in Aerospace Engineering, Levitas holds a secondary professorship in Mechanical Engineering and is a Faculty Scientist at the Ames Laboratory.
Levitas has developed a strong multidisciplinary research program at the intersection of advanced mechanics, physics, material science, chemistry, and applied mathematics and collaborates with the leading researchers over the world in these fields. He is considered a founder of the theoretical high-pressure mechanochemistry. He has had research results published in many of the world’s leading scientific journals, in numerous types of disciplines. He has presented numerous plenary and keynote lectures at various international conferences, as well as numerous invited lectures at various organizations over the world. He organized multiple international multidisciplinary symposia on phase transformations and mechanochemistry. Levitas has published more than 390 scientific papers, three books, ten book chapters, 245 referred journal papers and holds 11 patents.
Recent research awards include the Khan International Medal for outstanding contributions to the field of plasticity (2017) and the Iowa State University Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research (2016).
Learn more about Dr. Levitas, his background and research achievements on his Department of Aerospace Engineering web page.
Anson Marston, the award’s namesake, was an educator and engineering department head at Iowa State University, and was influential in the development of the College of Engineering and the Iowa State campus.
A complete list of College of Engineering honorees in the university awards ceremony can be found here.