UK Professor is First U.S. Winner of William Johnson International Gold Medal

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 10, 2015) — Longtime University of Kentucky College of Engineering Professor I.S. Jawahir, director of the Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing (ISM), is the first U.S. winner of the William Johnson International Gold Medal. 

Jawahir, joined by his wife, will accept the award at the Advances in Materials and Processing Technologies (AMPT) International Conference in Madrid, Spain, next week. The award is presented to an academic researcher and educator for his/her lifetime achievements in research and teaching of materials processing technologies.

"This is a wonderful and well-deserved recognition for Jawa," said UK College of Engineering Dean John Walz. "He is clearly one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable manufacturing and this award is a testament to his many achievements."

The award is named after Professor William Johnson, formerly of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and Cambridge University, whose pioneering work on materials processing and process modeling is internationally recognized.

In addition to directing the ISM, a multidisciplinary collaborative unit focused on developing and advancing sustainable manufacturing practices, Jawahir is also the James F. Hardymon Chair in Manufacturing Systems and a professor of mechanical engineering. His research areas include modeling and optimization of manufacturing processes, product and process design for sustainability, and sustainable manufacturing.

Jawahir joined the university faculty in 1990 as an associate professor after working in the industry as manager for Carbide Product Design at Carboloy, Inc., and as a senior lecturer at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

"I am very honored and humbled to receive this prestigious award, named after a pioneering researcher…Professor Johnson’s work in the early 1960s inspired my own Ph.D. work, almost 20 years later, in the 1980s at the University of New South Wales," Jawahir said. "Years later, my research group at the University of Kentucky was able to extend his early slip-line model to develop a universal slip-line model for machining with chip breaking, and enabled a range of industry applications. Professor Johnson’s visionary research provided a strong foundation for our work at the University of Kentucky."

Learn more about Jawahir's work and the Institute of Sustainable Manufacturing in the Spring 2015 issue of the Kentucky Engineering Journal: https://www.engr.uky.edu/kej/from-cradle-to-cradle/. 

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Harder, 859-323-2396, whitney.harder@uky.edu