Rate My Professor Steven Anton

Dr. Steven R. Anton is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Tennessee Technological University. He serves as Director of the Dynamic and Smart Systems Laboratory and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Anton earned his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2006 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2008 and 2011, respectively. Following his doctoral studies, he held a two-year postdoctoral position at Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining Tennessee Technological University as an Assistant Professor in 2013 and advancing to Associate Professor.

Anton's research centers on characterizing the dynamic response of smart material systems for sensing, energy harvesting, and structural health monitoring. By combining expertise in structural dynamics, behavior of active materials, experimental mechanics, and signal processing, his studies aim to discover new phenomena associated with smart materials dynamics. Current projects include developing a self-powered 'smart' total knee replacement implant that senses joint force and angle in real time—prototyped with over 20 students and funded by a $2.5 million NIH R01 grant—investigating vibration-based human-building interactions via integrated sensors in smart buildings, and harvesting ambient energy for low-power electronics. Additional research interests encompass energy harvesting, smart materials, piezoelectric sensing, biomedical sensing, robotics-based STEM education, structural health monitoring, and 3D printing. As principal investigator, he has secured over $3 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research—including the Young Investigator Program award—and other sources. Anton has authored over 90 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings. His contributions extend to mentoring through NSF REU, RET, and NRT grants. Honors include the Tennessee Tech Scholar-Mentor Award and the Kinslow Research Engineering Award.