Ares Rosakis - Biography#

Ares J. Rosakis was born in Athens, Greece on September 12, 1956, and is a dual citizen of the EU (Greece) and the USA. He received his bachelor's (B.A.) and master's (M.A.) degrees in Engineering Science (1978) from Oxford University, UK. He earned his Sc.M. (1980) and Ph.D. (1982) degrees in Engineering (Solid Mechanics) from Brown University. He joined the California Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 1982, promoted to the ranks of Associate and full Professor in 1988 and 1993, respectively. In 2004, he was named the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering. Since 2009, he serves as the Chair (Dean) of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) and he also holds the Otis Booth Leadership Chair. Prior to being the division chair of EAS, he served as the fifth Director of the historic Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT). In 2005, he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the École Normale Superieure in Paris and in 2007 he was the Astor Visiting Professor at Oxford University. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including Commandeur de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the Republic of France and his election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ares Rosakis is the world’s foremost expert in dynamic failure mechanics of solid materials. He has made pioneering contributions in the areas of dynamic failure of metals, composites and interfaces. His early work includes the study of dynamic, ductile failure of structural metals by using high speed photography, the real-time measurement of temperature fields at the vicinity of dynamically growing cracks and adiabatic shear bands and the development of a variety of optical and dynamic infrared diagnostic methods. He is credited for the invention of Coherent Gradient Sensing (CGS) interferometry, a novel method sensitive to gradients of optical path gradients which has been used in both fracture mechanics and thin film stress measurements. Other interests include,dynamic shear dominated rupture of heterogeneous materials and composites, rupture mechanics of crustal earthquakes, where he is credited for the experimental discovery of “intersonic” or “supershear” ruptures, and the reliability of thin films and in-situ wafer level metrology.