Chair and Cummins, Inc. Professor in Mechanical Engineering William “Billy” Oates of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering (M Wallheiser/FAMU-FSU Engineering)
William Oates, chair and Cummins Inc. Professor in Mechanical Engineering, was elected to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Mechanical Engineering Department Heads and Chairs Executive Committee. Oates was one of seven nominees who will occupy the 2022-2024 position.
“It is an honor to be selected by my peers to serve on the committee,” Oates said. “The exchange of ideas and collaboration will help further the exciting progress we are already making as a department.”
MEDHEC is an ad hoc committee consisting of all mechanical engineering department heads and chairs at institutions of advanced institutions of learning. The purpose of the committee is for members to exchange ideas and best practices for the education and administration of mechanical engineering departments. Members attend workshops, symposiums, and other events organized at the ASME conferences.
Oates current research interests include constitutive modeling of active materials and nonlinear control of adaptive structures. His research expertise is very broad including theoretical, computational, and experimental solid mechanics, uncertainty quantification, network science and quantum computing.
During Oates’s distinguished service to the college, he has received the FSU Developing Scholar Award, the ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award, the NSF Career Award, and the DARPA Young Faculty Award. He is also a Fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a Cummins, Inc. Professor in Mechanical Engineering.
“I look forward to identifying new educational and research goals together with other faculty,” Oates said. “I am most excited about getting on the path to achieve them.”