Anthony M. Waas is the Richard A. Auhll Department Chair of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he holds the Felix Pawlowski Collegiate Chair since September 1, 2018. Prior to that, he was the Boeing Egtvedt Endowed Chair Professor and Department Chair in the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington, Seattle.
The development of validated analytical and computational methods to understand how a structure (such as an air-vehicle wing, a fuselage, the load bearing structure of a land-vehicle, the wing of an insect, a wind turbine blade) made of multi-materials responds to external environments is the overarching goal of Wass’ research group. Naturally, this involves multi-physics and mechanics based models at different spatial and temporal scales. To achieve this goal, the group performs a combination of experiments, computational modeling and analysis, and theoretical developments when necessary. This work has led to novel algorithms and multi-scale methods that provide a balance between high fidelity and computational efficiency, with particular emphasis on capturing damage and failure mechanics, including interaction between these in a mesh (discretization) objective manner.
Professor Waas is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and the American Academy of Mechanics (AAM). He is a recipient of several best paper awards, the 2016 AIAA/ASME SDM award, the AAM Jr. Research Award, the ASC Outstanding Researcher Award, and several distinguished awards from the University of Michigan. He received the AIAA-ASC James H. Starnes, Jr. Award, 2017, for seminal contributions to composite structures and materials and for mentoring students and other young professionals. In 2017, Professor Waas was elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences, and in 2018 to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Professor Waas obtained his B.Sc in Aeronautics with First Class Honors from Imperial College, London, 1982, the ACGI in 1982, the MS and Ph.D in Aeronautics and Applied Mathematics (minor) from Caltech, 1983 and 1988, respectively.