Biography
Dr. John J. (Jack) Mecholsky, Jr., Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida in the Materials Science and Engineering Department.
He served as the Associate Chair from 2005-2010, the Chair of the Faculty Senate in the 2009-2010 academic year and served on the Board of Trustees for the University of Florida (2009-2010). He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). He served on the Board of Directors of the American Ceramic Society from 2006 to 2009. He is known as an international expert in the fractographic analysis of brittle materials.
Professor Mecholsky has over 200 technical publications and over 50 technical reports. While on sabbatical leave (1995-1996), he served as the Associate Director for Materials at the Office of Naval Research in London (UK), as a Guest Researcher (in 2006) at the National Institute for Standards and Technology and as a guest researcher at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge University (2013).
As a recipient of the UF’s Faculty Enhancement Opportunity (FEO) award, he spent two months at Imperial College in London (2010) as a visiting researcher. Prior to 1990, he held a joint appointment at Penn State University in the Materials Science Department as an Associate Professor and as a Research Associate in the (U. S. Navy’s Advanced Research Laboratory. From 1979-1984, he was a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. He worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. from 1972 to 1979 as a Ceramic Research Engineer. While finishing his graduate degrees, he was a structural research engineer at the Naval Ship Research & Development Center (formerly the David Taylor Model Basin) from 1967 to 1972. He helped design the pressure hull for the Deep Submergence Search Vehicle (DSSV) and the escape hatch for the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) [shown in the movie “Hunt for Red October”].
He developed new fractographic techniques used in the failure analysis of optical fibers, of infrared transmitting radome materials, and of ferroelectrics. He also developed equations for the analysis of failure by laser irradiation of ceramic materials. He holds patents for the development of a laser-hardened composite material and a bioactive tape-cast multi-layer ceramic/metal composite.
He is a co-author of “Fracture of Brittle Materials: Testing and Analysis”. He received his B.C.E. in Civil Engineering (1966), master’s degree in Structural Engineering (1968) and Ph.D. in Materials Science (1973) from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He received the University of Florida Engineering College’s Teaching Award in 2003, the Teacher of the Year Award in 2006, the Graduate Advisor of the Year Award in 2009 and the Graduate Mentoring Award in 2010.