Rate My Professor Charles Lu

Y. Charles Lu, Ph.D., P.E., serves as the H.E. Katterjohn Professor in Engineering, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Director of the Paducah Extended Campus Program at the University of Kentucky. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Materials Engineering from the University of Western Ontario in 2000, along with master's degrees in mechanical engineering, materials science, and mathematics. Prior to joining the University of Kentucky in 2006 as an Assistant/Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, he worked as a Research Scientist at the Akron Rubber Development Laboratory from 2000 to 2001 and held senior engineering positions at Dana Corporation from 2001 to 2006, where he received the Dana Engineering Achievement Award and six Dana Technical Achievement Awards. Throughout his career, he has held visiting research positions at the Air Force Research Laboratory during summers from 2007 to 2010, served as Visiting Faculty at the University of Dayton Research Institute in 2012, and as Visiting Professor at Case Western Reserve University in 2013.

Dr. Lu's research interests include micromechanics and nanomechanics, polymers, elastomers, composites, advanced and multifunctional materials, finite-element analysis, mechanical design, and computational materials science. He is the author of over 160 technical papers in refereed journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, as well as editor of 10 books, such as Design of Automotive Composites (2014), CAE Design and Failure Analysis of Automotive Composites (2014), and Biocomposites for Automotive Applications (2015). Key publications feature works on viscoelastic creep of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 2010), numerical design of shape memory polymer composites (Composites Part B, 2016), and modeling effective elastic properties of CNT nanocomposites (ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics, 2014). His scholarly impact is evidenced by fellowships in ASME and SAE, along with awards including the SAE International Forest R. McFarland Award (2015), Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award (2010), Excellence in Engineering Education Award (2017), Wethington Research Award (2011), and Outstanding Mechanical Engineering Faculty Award (2009). As Associate Editor of SAE International Journal of Materials and Manufacturing and SAE International Journal of Aerospace, he shapes the field through editorial contributions, NSF panel service, and conference organization.