Prof. Norman M. Wereley has been named the Techno-Sciences, Inc. (TSi) Faculty Fellow in Aerospace Engineering. This named professorship was established in January 2008.

Prof. Wereley joined the department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1993, and is a key contributing faculty member in the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center. He was the founding director of the Aerospace Engineering Undergraduate Honors Program, which emphasizes a series of enriched aerospace engineering courses and a research experience in the undergraduate curriculum. He is also the Director of the Smart Structures Laboratory, He is currently focusing of the development of innovative adaptive crashworthiness systems for automotive and aerospace applications such as crashworthy helicopter crew seats, as well as semi-active vibration damping, and adaptive shock and blast absorption systems. In addition, he is working on various actuation systems involving piezo-electric materials, pneumatic artificial muscles, shape memory alloys, and magnetorheological fluids and elastomers. He is the co-author of over 100 articles in archival journals and a co-inventor of 14 patents or patents pending. He was the recipient of an Army Young Investigator Award and National Science Foundation Career Award. Dr. Wereley was the recipient of the 2004 ASME Adaptive Structures Best Paper Award. Dr. Wereley is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Physics, and an associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Peter Chen (Ph.D. UMD Aerospace Engineering ‘96), Vice President at Techno-Sciences, Inc. stated that “It is our company’s privilege and pleasure to establish this named professorship in recognition of Prof. Wereley’s outstanding contributions to the field of smart structures and also to recognize his technical, scientific, and entrepreneurial contributions to TSi since 2003.” Dr. Wereley has collaborated with TSi on a series of BAA, SBIR, and STTR projects under U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, Marine Corp., NASA, Special Operations Command, and DARPA support. Mr. Chris LaVigna, President of TSi, asserts that “Dr. Wereley’s collaborative efforts have been a key factor in the success and growth of Techno-Science, Inc.’s research and development activities in aerospace engineering.”