Dr. Bogdan Epureanu appointed Roger L. McCarthy Professor of Mechanical Engineering

In a ceremony marking the appointment of Dr. Bogdan Epureanu as the Roger L. McCarthy Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Epureanu gave a lecture titled “The Transformative Potential of Nonlinear Dynamics in Decoding Our World”.

Collegiate professorships are essential to Michigan Engineering. They provide resources to reward and retain outstanding faculty in all areas of engineering. Appointment to a collegiate professorship is reserved for a faculty member of national and often international stature who has earned a highly distinguished record of teaching, research and publication. These professorships are traditionally named for former faculty members who made substantial scholarly and other contributions while at Michigan. Collegiate professorships, which are funded by the College, bring prestige and recognition to leading members of the faculty and reward their contributions to the institution and to the field.

The Roger L. McCarthy Professorship was named in honor of Dr. Roger L. McCarthy, an independent engineering consultant and owner of McCarthy Engineering, Palo Alto, California, and Board Member of Shui on Land, Ltd., which is publicly traded in Hong Kong, China, stock code 0272. Until 2008, Dr. McCarthy was chairman emeritus of Exponent, Inc., and chairman of Exponent Science and Technology Consulting Co., Ltd. (Hangzhou). Since joining Exponent (formerly Failure Analysis Associates) in 1978, he served as President, Chief Executive, and Chairman. He took Exponent public in 1990. Dr. McCarthy has investigated some of the major disasters of the current age, including the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the explosion and loss of the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea, the fire and explosion on the semi-submersible Glomar Arctic II, the rudder failure and subsequent floundering of the VLCC Amoco Cadiz, the bombing of the Murtaugh Federal Building in Oklahoma city, the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt, and most recently the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2004, Dr. McCarthy was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the U.S. National Academies. Dr. McCarthy was appointed by the first President Bush to a two year term on the President’s Commission on the National Medal of Science. Dr. McCarthy was the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering graduation in 2008. Dr. McCarthy serves on the Visiting Committee for the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Stanford Materials Science & Engineering Advisory Board, and the External Advisory Board to the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Michigan. Dr. McCarthy holds five academic degrees, including a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He is based in Palo Alto, California, and is a Registered Professional Mechanical Engineer in the State of California and two other States.