I am honored to receive such a prestigious award. Particularly looking at past 57 recipients in the past 62 years, I am humbled. For a long road coming to today, I love mechanisms and machines, I love design theory and I love my research that leads to the field of reconfigurable mechanisms.
19 June 2020
King's Engineer wins lifelong achievement award
Professor Jian S Dai wins prestigious award from the American Society of Machine Engineers (ASME).
Professor Jian S Dai, Professor of Mechanisms and Robotics at King’s College London, has been named by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) as the 2020 recipient of the prestigious Machine Design Award .
The award was established in 1958 and is the top award of the ASME Design Engineering Division. It recognises ‘eminent achievement or distinguished service in the field of machine design which is considered to include application, research, development, or teaching of machine design.’
Professor Dai is a pioneer in many aspects of research in mechanisms and robotics, developing a field of research and practice in reconfigurable mechanisms. He won the award for ‘ pioneering contributions in establishing the field of reconfigurable mechanisms and the sub-field of metamorphic mechanisms; and for making a lasting impact through research, application, teaching and service that have made it possible to bridge the gap between versatile but expensive robots and efficient but non-flexible machines.'
Commenting on the award Professor Dai said:
This is not the first time that Professor Dai has been recognised by ASME. In 2015 he was the first UK national recipient of the prestigious ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Award, given by the mechanisms and robotics committee of the ASME since 1974 to scientists and engineers known for a lifelong contribution to the fundamental theory, design and applications of mechanisms and robotics systems.
Professor Dai explains the commitment of King's to his subject:
I still remember vividly the first IEEE International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (IEEE ReMAR) was held at our Waterloo campus and Strand campus in 2009, where the Principal and vice Principals all attended and gave an opening speech. I thank King’s for its unreserved support
Professor Dai is Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of ASME, Fellow of RAS, and Fellow of IMechE. Currently he is the subject editor of Mechanism and Machine Theory, and an Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Mechanical Design with over 500 peer-reviewed papers and 10 books
In this story
Emeritus Professor of Mechanisms and Robotics