Tim Foecke

Timothy (Tim) Foecke (born 1963) is an American metallurgist, Deputy Chief of the Metallurgy Division, Leader of the Materials Performance Group, and Director of the NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting [1] at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Contents

Biography

Foecke received a bachelor's degree in 1986 and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering in 1991, both from the University of Minnesota.[2] His thesis work, under Professor William W. Gerberich, involved the interaction of cracks and crack tip emitted dislocations on toughening in crystals.

He was awarded a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship at NIST to work with Dr. Robb M. Thomson in 1991 to study dislocation generation and motion in nanomaterials, and published the first experimental observations of dislocation mechanisms in any nanomaterial in 1993.[3]

Work

Beginning in 1996, Foecke has been involved in the forensic examination of the structure and mechanical properties of metals recovered from the wreck of the RMS Titanic, and has been involved in expeditions in 1996, 1998 and 2004.[4] He was the originator of the "rivet theory" to explain the rapid sinking of the Titanic.[5] His initial report on the hull steel and rivets was published in 1998.[6] This study was greatly expanded in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Hooper McCarty in her PhD thesis work at Johns Hopkins University and was published in 2008 in the book "What Really Sank the Titanic - New Forensic Discoveries" (Citadel Press).[7]

Foecke was a member of the National Construction Safety Team that analyzed the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.[8]

Foecke leads a project at NIST that is creating a finite element model of the wreck of the USS Arizona, attempting to estimate remaining lifespan before collapse and to provide a mechanism to test remediation techniques before implementing them on the monument.[9] Foecke is also a consultant on conservation efforts on the wrecks of the CSS Hunley and USS Monitor.[10]

He has been involved in a number of television science productions as an interviewee and consultant, including Titanic - Anatomy of a Disaster (Discovery Channel), Titanic Live (Discovery Channel), Titanic - Answers from the Abyss (Discovery Channel), Collapse of the World Trade Center (Discovery Canada), Seconds from Disaster - Sinking of the RMS Titanic (National Geographic Channel), Living in a Material World (Discovery Science Channel), Return to Titanic (National Geographic Channel), Science of Superhuman Strength (Discovery Channel), and Humanless Earth (NOVA).

Foecke helped the Science Museum of Maryland in Baltimore develop the exhibit "Science of the Titanic", which tours children's museums in the US.[11]

Since 2001, Foecke has been an Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD and since 2010 has been an Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland - College Park.[12][13]

Dr. Foecke has a Bacon Number of 2 (Martin Sheen having been the narrator of the Discovery Channel documentary "Titanic-Anatomy of a Disaster", and co-starred in the movie "JFK" with Kevin Bacon), and an Erdos Number of 4 (via Robb Thomson to Peter Bergmann To Ernst G. Straus to Paul Erdos), giving him an Erdős–Bacon number of 6.

Honors and awards

References

  1. ^ NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting, http://www.nist.gov/mml/metallurgy/materials.../sheet_metal_forming.cfm, retrieved 2010-12-01 
  2. ^ University of Minnesota, http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2007/UR_130859_REGION1.html, retrieved 2010-12-05 
  3. ^ Nalwa, H. (2004), Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Vol 5, New York, New York: American Scientific Publishers, http://www.aspbs.com/enna-z.html 
  4. ^ RMS Titanic Inc., http://www.rmstitanic.net/index.php4?page=319, retrieved 2010-12-05 
  5. ^ Broad, William J. (January 27, 1998), "Faulty Rivets Emerge as Clues To Titanic Disaster", The New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE1DB133AF934A15752C0A96E958260&pagewanted=1, retrieved 2010-12-05 
  6. ^ NIST Personnel Web Page, http://www.nist.gov/mml/metallurgy/timothy_foecke.cfm, retrieved 2010-12-02 
  7. ^ Broad, William J. (April 15, 2008), "In Weak Rivets, A Possible Key to Titanic's Doom", The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15titanic.html, retrieved 2010-12-01 
  8. ^ NIST and the World Trade Center, http://wtc.nist.gov/, retrieved 2007-11-12 
  9. ^ Ruane, Michael E. (December 7, 2006), "One Last Mission for Ship Sunk in Pearl Harbor Attack", The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR2006120601916.html, retrieved 2010-12-01 
  10. ^ NIST Technicalendar, http://nvl.nist.gov/pub/nistpubs/calendars/techcal/2006/062306-tc.htm, retrieved 2010-12-05 
  11. ^ Titanic Science, http://www.titanicscience.com/TSci-ActivityGuideFinal.pdf, retrieved 2010-12-01 
  12. ^ Johns Hopkins University. "EP Homepages". http://ep.jhu.edu/course-homepages/viewpage.php?homepage_id=2956. Retrieved December 2, 2010. 
  13. ^ University of Maryland. "Materials Science and Engineering Faculty". http://www.mse.umd.edu/facstaff/faculty-list.html. Retrieved December 1, 2010. 
  14. ^ NRC Associates Program, http://nrc58.nas.edu/aodir/gen_page.asp?mode=detail&sql=idnumber='912332', retrieved 2010-12-01 
  15. ^ The Society of Naval Architects & Marine Engineers. "ABS Linnard Prize". http://www.sname.org/SNAME/SNAME/Directories/ProgramsResources/Awards/ABSLinnardPrize/Default.aspx. Retrieved December 2, 2010. 
  16. ^ NIST. "NISTIR 6250 Metallurgy Division 1998 Annual Reportl". http://www.metallurgy.nist.gov/techactv1998/AnnualReport1998.pdf. Retrieved December 5, 2010. 
  17. ^ NIST. "DOC Gold Medal". http://nvl.nist.gov/docspub/NIST_History_Vols/sp955_suppl_pdf/sp955_suppl_09_Appendix_G.pdf. Retrieved December 5, 2010. 

External links