Dr. Mark Horstemeyer

Professor Horstemeyer's passion is to perform scientific research with an engineering application in mind in the area of mechanics of materials. His microstructure-property modeling efforts can be used to optimally design not only automotive components and systems but weapons, computers, aircraft, and other applications as well. Furthermore, now that the mathematics relating microstructure to properties have been coupled, solving the inverse problem to achieve new materials designs is tractable. This potentially has a large impact in the design community. His experience at Sandia National Laboratories in working at various size scales provides a perspective in the research and design community that is different, beneficial, and challenging. In summary, at the structural scale, he has been involved in designing weapons/automotive components; at the macroscale scale he has developed internal state variable formulations related to plasticity and damage while coupling theoretical modeling to experiments; at the mesoscale he has worked on crystal plasticity formulations and worked microstructure-property relations from experiments and modeling paradigms; and at the atomic level he has analyzed size scale effects with atomistic modeling. At Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA), he worked on a myriad of projects mostly focusing on weapons programs but has recently transferred the research and technologies developed at Sandia to the automotive industry. Currently at MSU, he has collaborations with researchers at Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory, Naval Surface Warfare Center, USCAR, GM, Ford, Alcoa, and Nissan.

Holding a Chair position in Solid Mechanics in the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Professor Horstemeyer is overseeing the multiscale research related to cradle-to-grave modeling of automotive and truck components and systems. He desires to train researchers with the paradigm of the multiscale philosophy with strong bent on theory development, experimental validation, and materials analysis in order to change the next generation of component and system designers.

He has published over 250 journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports and is continually invited to give lectures for universities, government laboratories, and U.S. industry. He has received several technical awards at Sandia and a R&D100 award for his work on microstructure-property modeling.