Prof. Karlsson wins Young Scholars Award

Anette M. Karlsson, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been chosen as the winner of the prestigious Francis Alison Young Scholars Award for 2005. The annual award is given by the Francis Alison Society to one assistant professor at the University for outstanding scholarship, with research publications that enhance teaching.

Karlsson, a specialist in developing physics-based models to understand the response of structures or materials subject to mechanical loads, temperature changes or age limiting fatigue, was selected from a pool of 14 nominations made by department chairs.

“There are many outstanding young faculty members here at the University of Delaware, and being picked as the winner of this award is very humbling,” Karlsson said when she received the award in December. “To have my research contribution recognized with this award is quite thrilling.”

She says she enjoys working on real-life, mostly interdisciplinary engineering problems that can be solved only through basic research that requires collaboration with a broad range of experts.

“These collaborations give me a lot of motivation to pursue my research, and I am constantly learning,” Karlsson says. “The collaborations also extend to my graduate students. For example, one of my graduate students, Jin Yan, spent three months at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne last summer, developing a new test technique of high-temperature materials.”

During the past year, Karlsson has received grants from four national funding agencies and corporations, valued at more than $1 million. Since 1999, she has published 19 articles in refereed journals, conference proceedings and other peer-reviewed papers. The AIAA Journal, published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, recently accepted a research paper jointly written by Karlsson and Justin Caulfield, a senior engineering major who was the lead author.

“I try to engage undergraduate students in my research as well,” Karlsson says. “Right now, I have three undergraduate students working in my research lab, doing both experiments and numerical simulations.”

In the laboratory, Karlsson focuses on theoretical and experimental work, developing models to understand the behavior of the material systems being considered, followed by experimental work that inspires and verifies the models. She currently is working on composite structures, polymer fuel cells, thermal barrier systems and ultralight metal structures.