Prof Christopher Smith
Associate Professor
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Extension: 3652
Telephone: 01392 723652
Prof Chris Smith is Associate Professor in Functional Materials, and Director of Research for Engineering.
He graduated from the University of Leeds in 1992 and remained there to do a PhD in Biomaterials, graduating in 1995. He then worked as a post doctoral research fellow at the Universities of York and Exeter. He was appointed Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering in January 2000, Senior Lecturer in 2006, and Associate Professor in Functional Materials in 2008.
Current research projects are sponsored by - Rolls-Royce.
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-3474-2009
Current h index = 13, g index = 5
Research Interests
His research interests are in adding functionality into materials (often termed 'smart' or 'intelligent' materials), via understanding and engineering of their structure and physical properties. This work has focussed on negative Poisson's ratio, zero or negative thermal expansivity, and disorder, but of late also examining negative stiffness and mass, and vibration damping. He is interested in relating internal structure to unusual physical phenomena, in both synthetic and biological materials. He has a long standing interest in Biomimetics or Bionics - the transfer of technology from biological to synthetic.
Teaching Interests
Prof Smith teaches the follwoing modules,
ECM1107 Materials & Manufacturing: Core Engineering II,
ECM2114 Solid Mechanics,
ECM3116/7 Manufacturing,
ECMM107 Mechanics of Materials,
ECMM127 Advanced Materials Engineering
As well as supervising individual and group projects.
Other Relevant Information
Prof Smith is currently a member of EPSRC college (since 06), and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and referees manuscripts for several international research journals.
He is an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Bionic Engineering http://tinyurl.com/2ypx88, a founding editor of the new International Journal of Novel Materials http://tinyurl.com/ccsts7, and has guest edited:-
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society series A, special edition "Biomimetics: Technology Transfer from Biology to Engineering", 2002, Volume 360, Number 1791.
Physica Status Solidi B, special edition on Auxetics 2007 published in early 2008
He has given invited lectures at the University of Wisconsin "The Mohs Lectures by Placon" series at the Rheology Research Center - http://rrc.engr.wisc.edu/ and at The Univeristy of Jilin (China), The Technical University of Ilmenau (Germany), The Jozef Stefan Institute, Physics (Slovenia), and several UK universities.
He was Conference Organiser for the "1st International Conference on Auxetics and Related Anomalous Systems" Exeter, Sept 2006 - http://latis.exeter.ac.uk/auxetics2006/index.htm and has served on several conference scientific committees, incl national committee member for the ICCM 17 conference in 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/6zt3ba
Prof Smith was Associate Dean of Postgraduate Studies (05-07), Admissions Officer for Engineering Programmes (04-10), chaired a 'task and finish' group on new qualifications incl Diploma and Cambridge Pre-U
Prof Smith was the HE Advocate for the Engineering Diploma in the Peninsular region from 07- 09.
Qualifications: BSc, PhD
