Hayley H. Shen, Ph.D., F.EMI, F.ASCE, a civil and environmental engineering research professor at Clarkson University, where she has held several positions since 1976, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Shen has held visiting professor positions in Sweden, New Zealand, Japan, China, Singapore, and Poland as well. Her research consists of two fields: granular materials and sea ice–wave interaction. She entered both fields in their infancy, and participated in their rapid developments throughout her career. In both fields she combined her mathematical training with physical intuition to create theories which not only explain observations, but also help in building models for engineering practice.
In granular materials, she developed the constitutive law in the rapid flow regime. By introducing the internal structure of grain-clustering, she provided a bridge to combine the rapid-flowing and quasi-static regimes, thereby connecting traditionally chemical engineering problems with geotechnical engineering problems.
In sea ice–wave interaction, she derived internal ice stress from micromechanical interactions of ice floes and developed theories for pancake-ice-cover formation, a phenomenon now prevalent in both the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic Ocean. With her students, she established an ice model now used in the global ocean wave model WAVEWATCHIII for wave forecasts in the Arctic.
Her studies have been funded by ASCE Engineering Foundation, U.S. Army, National Science Foundation, U.S. Naval Academy, NASA, ONR, Exxon Mobil, John Deere, Jenike & Johanson, and the American Bureau of Shipping.
Shen has directed 15 Ph.D. dissertations and seven M.S. theses. Many of her graduate students continue their research in either granular flows or sea ice fields around the world. She was also the associate director of the Honors Program at Clarkson University for eight years, during which she was responsible for more than 150 honors theses.
Shen has been a lifelong contributor to ASCE. Starting from her role as a member of the Granular Flow Committee, she served as the news correspondent for the Engineering Mechanics Division (EMD) and as a member of its Fluids Committee. She became the associate editor of ASCE’s Journal of Engineering Mechanics, a member of EMD’s Executive Committee and Advisory Board, helped with the organization and transition of EMD into the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI), and served on the Board of Governors. She is one of the first elected Fellows of EMI.
In addition to her education at Clarkson, Shen received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from National Taiwan University, and a master’s in engineering mechanics and Ph.D. in applied mathematical sciences from the University of Iowa.
