Jacob Fish, the Rosalind and John J. Redfern ’33 Chaired Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and director of the university’s Multiscale Science and Engineering Center, has won the biennial Computational Mechanics Award from the International Association for Computational Mechanics.

“We are extremely proud of Dr. Jacob Fish’s selection for this prestigious award from the IACM. This is the highest recognition from his peers of his research and leadership in the field of computational mechanics,” said David Rosowsky, dean of the School of Engineering at Rensselaer. “Professor Fish has been an extremely active researcher, advising numerous graduate students at Rensselaer, and has created countless synergistic activities among faculty and students through his leadership of the Multiscale Science and Engineering Center. We congratulate Jacob on being selected to receive this international award.”

Given every two years, the IACM Computational Mechanics Award recognizes outstanding contributions or accomplishments by a researcher in the field. The IACM will honor Fish in July at the World Congress on Computational Mechanics in Sydney, Australia.

Fish’s research encompasses a wide variety of science and engineering disciplines, from investigating the structural integrity of mechanical, aerospace, and civil systems, to electronic packaging, nanostructured material systems, biological systems, and energy absorption systems. Fish is considered a pioneer in multiscale computation, and for emphasizing in his research how nature is replete with systems that encompass interacting behaviors occurring across a range of spatial and temporal scales. His most recent research work, titled “Computational Continua,” has been regarded as “one of the most significant contributions to the field of mechanics in the past decade.”

Fish earned his master’s degree in structural mechanics from the Israel Institute of Technology, and his doctorate in theoretical and applied mechanics from Northwestern University. Prior to joining the Rensselaer faculty in 1989, he worked as a structural and mechanical engineer in Israel. Fish became a full professor in 1998, and in 2005 was named the Rosalind and John J. Redfern Jr. ’33 Chaired Professor in Engineering. The following year he was appointed director of Rensselaer’s Multiscale Science and Engineering Center.

A prolific author, Fish has written more than 160 journal articles and book chapters. He is a past president of United States Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), founder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Multiscale Computational Engineering, as well as associate editor of the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering. He also sits on the editorial board of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering and International Journal of Computational Engineering Science.

Fish’s recent textbook, A First Course in Finite Elements, was released in 2008 to acclaim. The book has been integrated into curriculums at universities across the globe, and is currently being translated into several different languages.

In 2005 Fish received the USACM Computational Structural Mechanics Award in recognition of his contributions to multiscale computational methods. For his “significant contributions to computational science and engineering” he received the 2003 Rensselaer School of Engineering Research Award. He is also a fellow of the IACM and the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics.

For more information on Rensselaer’s Multiscale Science and Engineering Center, visit: http://msec.rpi.edu.