Raudel Avila, assistant professor of mechanical engineering (MECH) at Rice, has received the Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Avila was recognized for his "outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering within 10 years of graduation with a baccalaureate degree."
Avila earned his B.S. in MECH from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2017 and his Ph.D. in the same discipline from Northwestern University in 2023. That year he joined the faculty at Rice, where he directs the Computational Mechanics and Bioelectromagnetics Lab.
He was awarded the 2023 ASME Applied Mechanics Division/Haythornthwaite Foundation Research Initiation Grant for his work in mechanics of strain-insensitive bioelectronics. His research aims to integrate mechanics and electromagnetics to design and optimize biomedical technologies.
Avila has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in multidisciplinary journals including Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and such ASME publications as the Journal of Applied Mechanics. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited more than 3,500 times in areas related to engineering mechanics, mechanical engineering, and electromagnetics.
In addition to the gold medal, Avila will receive $1000, a certificate and a $750 travel allowance.
The last Rice faculty member to win the Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal was Pol Spanos, the Lewis B. Ryon Professor in Mechanical and Civil Engineering, in 1982. The medal has been given to one engineer per year since 1938.