Lewis receives Design Automation Award from ASME

Honor recognizes Lewis’ seminal contributions to research in design automation

Kemper Lewis received the Design Automation award from ASME.

Corina Sandu, design engineering division chair of ASME and a professor at Virginia Tech, and Michael Kokkolaras, chair of the ASME Design Automation Executive Committee and a professor at McGill University, present UB professor Kemper Lewis (center) with the Design Automation Award at ASME’s International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC).

by Jane Stoyle Welch

Published August 30, 2017 This content is archived.

Kemper Lewis, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is this year’s recipient of the Design Automation Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

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“We are very proud to learn that Kemper’s pioneering contributions in the field of design automation have been recognized by this prestigious award.”
Liesl Folks, dean
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

The award recognizes his “seminal contributions to the field of design automation that have advanced both theoretical development and practical applications in many areas, including complex systems design, design analytics, and decision theory."

According to the nominating committee, “Kemper has been a sustained, high-quality contributor to design automation research in a wide range of topics focused on decision-based design. His work in the development and use of game theory to support engineering decisions, in particular in design of complex systems, is world-renowned. He belongs to a select group of leaders in the design engineering community with national and international reach and respect."

The Design Automation Committee is the oldest and largest technical committee of the ASME Design Engineering Division and the award is the highest that the Committee can grant. It was established by ASME in 1988.

“We are very proud to learn that Kemper’s pioneering contributions in the field of design automation have been recognized by this prestigious award,” said Liesl Folks, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Lewis is an expert in the areas of decision networks in advanced design and manufacturing environments and how businesses use data, analytics, and technology to make complex tradeoffs in the design of engineered systems.

He is director of UB’s Community of Excellence in Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotic Technologies (SMART), an initiative that harnesses the strengths of faculty across the university to develop advanced manufacturing processes and technologies that enable cost-effective design of highly customizable, high-quality products.

Lewis also serves as co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant focused on cyber-empathic design, which is the use of embedded sensors (in addition to surveys and other traditional sources of data) in products to measure their effectiveness in the ever-emerging Internet of Things.

He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and has served on the National Academies Panel on Benchmarking the Research Competitiveness of the United States in Mechanical Engineering.

In recognition of his teaching and research, he has received awards from ASME, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Society for Engineering Education, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the National Science Foundation, and the State of New York. He co-edited the text, “Decision Making in Engineering Design,” from ASME Press and co-authored the third edition of the text, “Introduction to Mechanical Engineering,” from Cengage Learning.

Lewis received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1996.

The award was presented at ASME’s International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC), which was held on August 6-9, 2017, in Cleveland, Ohio.