Oliver J. Myers

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  • Oliver J. Myers's details

  Oliver J. Myers is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Mississippi State University. Dr. Myers is a graduate of the University of Maryland Baltimore County for all three degrees of Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering.  Prior to joining MSU, he worked as a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Northrop Grumman Corporation Electronic Systems Division in Baltimore Maryland as an Integrated Product Team Lead and lead engineer on composite material chassis and module designs, micro systems integration, micro-fabrication and manufacturing of electronic assemblies.   Dr. Myers served as an Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.  He has also worked as a design and analysis engineer at the Naval Air Warfare Center working on several military aircraft platforms and as an engineer with the Maryland Department of the Environment developing the analysis code for the vehicle emission inspection program.  He has the honor of being selected in the inaugural class of the prestigious Meyerhoff Scholarship Program at UMBC under the mentorship of Dr. Freeman Hrabowski.  While working full-time and attending school full- and part-time on alternating semesters, Dr. Myers completed his dissertation focusing on computational modeling and experimentation of smart material driven micro-electro-mechanical systems.  He is developing research in smart material and smart system applications for nano-, micro-, mini- and macro-scale systems, interdisciplinary computational models of mechanical systems and integrated design/analysis/prototyping of mechanical devices and systems.  Dr Myers has also served as mentor for several undergraduate students through the Meyerhoff Scholarship Program, middle and high school students through the Northrop Grumman Corporation WORTHY Program and football coach.

  His research interests intertwine the areas of material science, applied mechanics and applied design by focusing on:

  1. Modeling of Micro-electro-mechanical Systems – Current research focuses on improving existing numerical models by characterizing nano and micro thin-film materials, smart material integration and behavior and coupling the results of the models to practical experimental results.
  2. Smart material/systems development and modeling – The ongoing research focuses on implementing smart materials into composite materials systems to implement, characterize and improve the non-destructive evaluation of composite material systems/structures.
  3. Finite Element Modeling for advanced design – Complex Smart materials and structures provide unique challenges. Multiple scales and multiple materials are included in the typical smart structure adding complexity to the simulation. Material constitutive response for both passive and active materials must be addressed. Analytical and computational models that may provide accurate mathematical results do not always provide similar results for smart materials embedded in a structure. While diverse geometries and materials comprise smart materials and structures, common to all problems are the need for comparison with experimental results whenever possible and the need for multiple types of models and techniques. It is important to understand that computational modeling can be used to predict performance and performance trends. Advanced Finite Element Modeling will a) facilitate the determination of smart material coupling to the host material and b) link multiple analytical and computational models to develop a more comprehensive view of composite smart structure performance.