The Mechanical Engineering Department has hired Wyoming native and UW alum Dr. Ray Fertig as its newest faculty member.

August 5, 2011 — The Mechanical Engineering Department has hired Wyoming native and UW alum Dr. Ray Fertig as its newest faculty member. Dr. Fertig completed his B.S. and M.S. degrees at the University of Wyoming in Mechanical Engineering in 2001 and 2003, respectively. His M.S. research work was done under the guidance of ME Professor Mark Garnich. He then went on to complete a PhD in Materials Science at Cornell University (under Dr. Shefford Baker), during which time he also worked as a visiting researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA and at the Max Planck Institut für Metallforshung in Stuttgart, Germany. After receiving his doctorate, Dr. Fertig moved back to his hometown of Cheyenne WY. He is married to wife Jessica and has one son, Daniel.

For the past three years Dr. Fertig has been working as a Senior Applied Research Engineer for Firehole Composites, a software company based in Laramie. At Firehole he specialized in composite materials analysis using computational models as a virtual laboratory to study the mechanisms that drive the mechanical behavior of materials. His overarching professional goal is to use the knowledge gained from computational mechanics simulations to develop better models for predicting large-scale material behavior. Recently, his work has been applied to nano-mechanics of thin films, fatigue life prediction of composite materials, and the mechanical behavior of high-temperature ceramics and ceramic matrix composites.

At UW, Dr. Fertig will teach a variety of both undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of applied mechanics and materials, while simultaneously developing a research program. The Department is delighted to welcome back a native son, and according to Dept. Head Paul Dellenback, “Ray’s great enthusiasm for his work and for teaching is infectious and I am confident he will have both immediate and long-term impacts on our Department’s programs. Ray is an extremely talented individual and very personable so that I am delighted that we were able to hire him as our first choice from more than 100 applicants.”

 

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