Professor Maria Kashtalyan

Biography

Professor Kashtalyan is Director of the Centre for Micro- and Nanomechanics. She joined the University of Aberdeen in 2002 as an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow and was appointed a Lecturer in Engineering in 2004, promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007, Reader in 2011, and Personal Chair in 2014.

Before joining the University of Aberdeen, Professor Kashtalyan was an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow (2001-2002) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate (1998-2001) at the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London. She was also a Visiting Research Scientist at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge (1996-1997) and a recipient of the Royal Society/NATO Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (1998). 

She authored more than 190 publications including more that 80 papers in peer-reviewed international scientific journals, 5 chapters in major reference books on composites, and 45 papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings. Three of her papers were included into Top 25 most read articles of the European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids (July – September 2011), International Journal of Solids and Structures (April – June 2007) and European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids (July 2004 – March 2005).

In July 2020, Maria Kashtalyan became the new Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Composite Materials journal, published by Springer Nature, succeeding Professor Peter Beaumont, the founding editor of the journal, who stood at its helm for more than a quarter century.

Research Overview

Professor Kashtalyan's main research results are in

• Solid mechanics and its applications
• Mathematical modelling of anisotropic heterogeneous materials
• Functionally graded materials and their applications
• Fibre-reinforced composite materials for aircraft, marine, automotive and civil applications
• Saint-Venant's principle for anisotropic and inhomogeneous materials
• Thermo-electro-mechanical coupling in layered systems
• Wave propagation in pre-stressed materials and structures
• Intra- and interlaminar damage and manufacturing defects in layered materials and structures
• Stiffness degradation and damage growth prediction for advanced composites
• Theory of anisotropic and inhomogeneous plates of variable thickness

Collaborations

Over the years, Professor Kashtalyan has established collaborative links with University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of Surrey, University of Sheffield, University of Bristol, National Physical Laboratory, DSTL (UK); Institute for Mechanics, Technical University of Berlin (Germany); Monash University, Melbourne (Australia); Laboratory for Technical Mechanics, University of Paderborn (Germany); University of Stuttgart (Germany); Institute of Lightweight Structures and Aerospace Engineering, Vienna University of Technology (Austria); ENSMA, Laboratory for Mechanics and Physics of Materials (France); Ecole Centrale de Lyon, University Lyon (France); Luleå Technical University (Sweden); Timoshenko Institute of Mechanics (Ukraine); University of Salerno (Italy); Universita di Napoli 'Federico II' (Italy); Texas A&M University (USA), University of New Hampshire (USA).

Funding and Grants

Professor Kashtalyan is currently a Principal Investigator of the Royal Society International Joint Project with the University of Bremen (Germany) on “Consistent plate theory for graded plates” (2017-2020). Recently, she was a Principal Investigator of the Royal Society International Joint Project with the University of Seville (Spain) on “Modelling multiple transverse cracking in composite laminates” (2015-2018), with Karlsruhe Technical University (Germany) on “Multi-scale modelling of metal-ceramic composites with lamellar microstructure” (2013-2016). She was also a Co-Investigator of the project “Novel structural and sealing components suitable for use in containing a range of aggressive chemicals” (2013-2014) funded by EPSRC, Technology Strategy Board and Balmoral Sectional Tanks Ltd. Previously, she was a Principal Investigator of two International Joint Projects funded by the Royal Society ("Indentation of anisotropic materials with gradients in elastic properties", 2010-2012, and "Three-dimensional solutions for transversely isotropic inhomogeneous media", 2009-2011), as well as three International Exchange Programme grants of The Royal Society of Edinburgh (2019, 2017, 2012). She was also a Co-Investigator of two research grants funded by EPSRC: "Effect of thermo-electro-mechanical coupling and non-linearities on dynamics processes in inelastic layered structures" (2007-2011) and "3-D dynamic problems for cracked layered materials with contact interaction of crack faces" (2007-2011).

Teaching Responsibilities

Professor Kashtalyan's teaching duties include:

• Level 4 course EM4529 Nonlinear Mechanics (from 2017-18) –  50% delivery of lectures and tutorials; around 80 students each year
• Level 5 course EM501Q Advanced Composite Materials (from 2015-16) – course design and development as a part of Curriculum Reform (CREF) implementation; course co-ordination; 100% delivery of lectures and tutorials; around 50 students each year
• Level 1 course EG1510 Fundamentals of Engineering Mechanics (from 2014-15) – 50% delivery of lectures, tutorials, labs; more than 200 students each year
• Level 1 course EG1009/EG1012 Fundamentals of Engineering Materials (2010-11 – 2015-16) – course design and development as a part of Curriculum Reform (CREF) implementation; course co-ordination; 50% delivery of lectures, tutorials, labs; more than 200 students each year
• Supervising undergraduate BEng/MEng and postgraduate MSc project students