bios of lifetime achievement award recipients

Richard Greaves

After working in the nuclear industry and earning his PhD, Richard joined Vibro-Meter in 1972 as head of sensor design and has been in the monitoring and engine health management business since that time. In 1988 he established Vibro-Lot. In 1996, he returned to Vibro-Meter where he was promoted Director of the Aviation Sector. By 1990, he grew the sector to two-thirds of the company’s revenues. When Meggitt acquired the company, Richard rose from being a divisional President to the Chief Technology Officer of Meggitt Plc. He has one of the longest careers in a PHM-related technology, touching every major aerospace platform in the western world. His major contribution in sensor design were for very high temp transducers for vibration, pressure and torque which enabled direct measurements to be made in locations that were previously impossible. Within SAE, he served as a member of E-32 Committee and later as its Chair. He became a member of the Board of Directors of SAE International, a member of SAE Air & Space Advisory Group, and the 2015 President of SAE International’s global organization. He still serves SAE as a member of the SAE Aerospace Council and of the SAE Executive Nominating Committee. He helped establish the HM-1 Committee and the IVHM Steering Group, of which he was the founding Chair. He has also been instrumental in seeking synergy between SAE IVHM and the PHM Society.
Return to List of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

Michael Pecht

Dr. Pecht’s development of the physics of failure approach to electronics reliability has revolutionized the way that the electronics industry designs, tests and sustains its electronics-based products. This was a significant change from the handbook-based approaches (e.g., Mil-hdbk-217, FIDES, Telcordia; all of which Prof Pecht and his team worked on). Dr. Pecht developed the field of prognostics and health management of electronics, which uses physics of failure knowledge and combines it with monitored data in order to provide an accurate understanding of a product’s “health” in situ. He and his team at the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) have been responsible for developing the tools and procedures to make prognostics and health management possible.
Return to List of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

George Vachtsevanos

Dr. Vachtsevanos’s most impactful achievement over the past 34 years has been in bringing the attention of government and industry managers/technologists/accountants to the potential benefits of PHM technologies through extensive short course offerings, publications, presentations, workshops, direct contacts via sponsored PHM related projects, and mentorship to numerous students who went on to push frontiers further in PHM. It was a challenging task to overcome the prevailing culture and existing practices. Moving from “fix it when needed” to “scheduled maintenance” and PHM/CBM+ required his resources and convincing arguments. The absence of true success stories in the early years (1980s-2000) was a major impediment. Starting in 2000 his efforts saw light through acceptance of PHM concepts by government and industry, which assisted to create a dramatic change in culture. Rotor wing aircraft fitted with HUMS started facilitating diagnostic technologies. Major defense companies and aerospace OEMs were motivated by the new competitive environment and a need to improve system reliability, availability and readiness. In this last decade, many of those barriers have been overcome leading to more widespread acceptance of the emerging PHM technologies. Dr. Vachtsevanos’ current research activities focus on Predictive Maintenance within a Digital Twin framework that exploit prognostic information and optimize system design and maintenance practices.
Return to List of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

Fu-Kuo Chang

Dr. Fu-Kuo Chang is a Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Dr. Chang is often regarded as the “father of structural health monitoring (SHM)”- a key enabling technology for PHM. Dr. Chang pioneered the use of acousto-ultrasound waves through built-in piezoelectric sensors to detect damage (cracks, debonds, delamination, etc.). With his vision and efforts, Dr. Chang initiated and co-founded the Aerospace Industry Steering Committee for SHM in 2003 to promote worldwide standardization of SHM for aerospace implementation. Under his leadership, the first Aerospace Recommended Practice for SHM (SAE ARP-6461) was published for commercial aviation worldwide in 2013. Dr. Chang strongly supports and promotes the SHM/PHM interaction through organizing joint technical sessions in International Workshops on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM) at Stanford and European Workshops on Structural Health Monitoring (EWSHM). He is the Editor-in- Chief of the international Journal of Structural Health Monitoring, the recipient of 2004 SHM Life-time Achievement Award, and the 2010 SPIE Smart Structures/NDE Life-Time Achievement award. Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Acellent Technologies; Fellows of AIAA and ASME.
Return to List of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

Andy Hess

Andy Hess is a graduate of the University of Virginia (BS Aerospace Engineering) and the U. S. Navy Test Pilot School. Andy attended George Washington University working towards a Masters in Technology Management. Andy is world renowned for his work in fixed and rotary wing health monitoring and is recognized as the father of Naval Aviation propulsion diagnostics. Working for the Naval Air System Command and beginning with the A-7E Engine Monitoring System program of the early 70’s, Andy has been the leading advocate for health monitoring in the Naval Aviation. He has been actively involved in every NAVAIR aircraft program since the F-8, leading to the evolution and development of not just engine monitoring; but also, aircraft structural life usage, comprehensive health monitoring and management capabilities for most all other aircraft subsystems and advance maintenance concepts like Condition Based Maintenance (CBM+). For the last 10 years of his government career, Andy worked leading and managing the vision, the development, and integration of the Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) system the autonomic logistics support concept for the Joint Strike Fighter program. Andy’s consulting interests are now leading him and his clients to exploring the application of PHM capabilities and CBM+ related support concepts to many new industry sectors such as: industrial gas and steam turbines, ships and fast patrol boats, unmanned vehicles, wind energy, nuclear energy, ground vehicles, mining, and gas and oil. Serving on the Board of Directors, Andy helped establish and grow the new and very successful PHM Society professional organization and is the president of the society. Andy was named an Asset Management Fellow with the International Society of Engineering Asset Management and is a member of the new SAE HM-1 committee on Integrated Vehicle Health Management Systems.
Return to List of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

Michael Roemer

Dr. Michael J. Roemer is currently a Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) consultant with over 25 years experience in the development of automated health monitoring, failure prediction and system self-awareness technologies for a wide range of military and commercial applications. His experience is focused on automated vehicle health management system implementations to predict system conditions in real-time and perform automated contingency management and planning. He has developed various system health prediction and accommodation strategies utilizing technologies such as dynamic signature analysis, artificial intelligence, system identification/realization, probabilistic analysis, and risk assessment methods. He was previously the co-founder and Director of Engineering of Impact Technologies, a part of Sikorsky Aircraft and currently a Lockheed Martin company. He was also co-founder and Vice President of the PHM Society, Chairman of the SAE HM-1 Integrated Vehicle Health Management Committee, board member and past Chairman of the Machinery Failure Prevention Technology (MFPT) Society, Prognostic Lead for the SAE E-32 Engine Condition Monitoring Committee, Member of the IGTI Marine Committee and ASME Controls and Diagnostics Committee and Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the co-author of a book titled “Intelligent Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis for Engineering Systems” and has written or co-authored more than 100 technical papers related to integrated systems health management.
Return to List of Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients