Udwadia: First-ever winner for "a record of sustained excellence"

Firdaus Udwadia, a professor in USC's Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering who is also a professor of civil engineering, of mathematics and of information operations in the USC Marshall School, has won the Outstanding Technical Contribution Award for 2006 from the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

 

The award will be presented to Professor Udwadia at a banquet on March 7, 2006, during Earth & Space 2006, the 10th ASCE Aerospace Division International Conference on Engineering, Construction and Operations in Challenging Environments, held in Houston, Texas.

The Outstanding Technical Contribution Award was created in 1999 by the Aerospace Division of the ASCE to recognize a member's distinguished achievements in aerospace engineering that also impact other areas of civil engineering. It is presented to a member who either has made a single contribution during the previous year or has maintined a "record of sustained excellence in technical contributions." Udwadia is the first recipient of this award since its establishment.

Udwadia's research has produced fundamental results in analytical dynamics, structural dynamics and control, and computational methods. His work with the late R. E. Kalaba (also of USC) resulted in a new approach to analyzing the dynamics of constrained motion. He subsequently extended their framework to analytical dynamic systems which allow constraints to do work. Udwadia's work in structural dynamics and system identification has found application not only in the aerospace industry, but also in designing buildings to withstand earthquakes.