Monday, May 5th, 2025
Prof. Daniel J. Inmann
Harm Buning Collegiate Professor of Aerospace
University of Michigan
Biography: Daniel J. Inmann, Ph.D., Michigan State University (1980, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering; 1975, MAT in Physics; 1970, B.S. in Physics) is the Harm Buning Collegiate Professor and former Chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. Formerly he was the Director of the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures and the G.R. Goodson Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. A former Department Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo, he has held adjunct or visiting positions in the Division of Applied Math at Brown University, in Aerospace at the University of Bristol, UK, at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and in math at the University of Southern California. Since 1980, he has published 9 books (on energy harvesting, vibration, control, statics, and dynamics), eight software manuals, 20 book chapters, over 410 journal papers and 674 proceedings papers, given 78 keynote or plenary lectures, graduated 68 Ph.D. students, and supervised more than 75 MS degrees. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics (AAM), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA). He is currently Technical Editor of the Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures (1999-present), Technical Editor of the Shock and Vibration Digest (1998-2001), and Technical Editor of the journal Shock and Vibration (1999-present). He won the ASME Adaptive Structures Award in April 2000, the ASME/AIAA SDM Best Paper Award in April 2001, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials Lifetime Achievement Award in March of 2003, and the 2007 ASME/Boeing Best Paper by the ASME Aerospace Division’s Structures and Materials Committee. In September 2007, he received the ASME Den Hartog Award for lifetime achievement in teaching and research in vibration and the 2009 Lifetime Achievement award in Structural Health Monitoring.
Tuesday, May 6th, 2025
Grama Bhashyan
CTO for Mechanical Business Unit
Ansys
Biography: Grama Bhashyam is a Fellow of ANSYS Inc., and concurrently holds the role of CTO for Mechanical Business Unit focusing on Solid& Structural Mechanics. He has a doctoral degree and has been deeply involved in commercial nonlinear finite element solution development for over four decades. He advanced from a developer to a leader, authored publications, and led teams in the core computational mechanics areas. He advises and leads selected strategic initiatives in his current role.
Wednesday, May 7th
Kevin Rivers
Associate Center Director for Technical
NASA's Langley Research Center
Biography: Kevin Rivers is the Associate Center Director, Technical, at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
In this role, Rivers leads strategy and transformation of the center's technical capabilities to ensure NASA’s future mission success. He is particularly focused on accelerating Langley's internal and external collaborations as well as the infusion of digital technologies so the Center can thrive in an ever-more digitally enabled, hyper-connected, fast-paced, and globally competitive world.
Prior to this assignment, Rivers served as Director of the Research Directorate (RD), providing executive leadership to Langley's largest organization. The Research Directorate is made up of over 620 civil service researchers and support personnel, as well as more than 350 on-site contractor employees. As director, Rivers provided focused, technical leadership to NASA programs and projects through conceiving, advocating, proposing, planning, and executing mission-relevant, high-impact research and engineering activities.
Rivers previously served as the Deputy Director of RD at Langley and prior to that, as Deputy Director for Flight Projects Directorate. There, Kevin assisted the center's Director for Flight Projects in leading and managing the development and execution of advanced flight projects to support all NASA Missions including Aeronautics, Human Exploration and Operations, Science, and Space Technology. He was also responsible for long-range project planning and formulation of Project Office objectives, policy, and processes.
Rivers also managed the Launch Abort System Office within the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Program where he was responsible for all aspects of the Launch Abort System development. He successfully led the Launch Abort System team to develop and demonstrate the system through the Pad Abort-1 flight test in May 2010 and through the Exploration Flight Test-1 in December 2014.
During his long career at Langley, Rivers has served as research engineer, project technical lead, branch head, and project manager. In these prior assignments, he led the development of advanced structures technologies for future spacecraft, an on-orbit repair for the Space Shuttle wing-leading-edge, and the integrated vehicle design and analysis for the historic Ares 1-X flight test that flew in November 2009.
He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Mississippi State University and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering at Old Dominion University.