Outstanding Service Recognition for Professor

Professor Jian S Dai, a professor in the Department of Informatics, was awarded a plaque by ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). The plaque was given by the ASME Design Division and the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee, in recognition of his outstanding service as conference chair of the 36th Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, held in Chicago in August 2012. 

The mechanism conference series started in October 1952 and is the most prestigious and longest held conference series on mechanisms in the world. The conference series was biennial until 2004 and generally took place in US cities, although the 2002 and 2010 conferences happened in Montreal. The 2012 conference was the first occasion on which a non-American professional was selected as the conference chair in this prestigious conference series.

Professor Dai has been a member of the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics committee and Chair of ASME UK and Ireland Section. He is an ASME Fellow and is currently Associate Editor of the prestigious mechanisms journal, Transactions of ASME, Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. He is also Associate Editor of the robotics journal, IEEE Transactions on Robotics. He has been a symposium chair in previous ASME Mechanisms and Robotics conferences and has received several ASME service awards in the past years. In addition, this year Professor Dai successfully organised and chaired the 2nd ASME international conference on reconfigurable mechanisms and robots (ReMAR 2012) in Tianjin, China.

Professor Dai is a member of the Centre for Robotics Research. His research covers a wide range of topics including computational and theoretical kinematics, screw theory and Lie group, grasping and manipulation theory, mechanisms theory, mechanisms development, metamorphic and reconfigurable mechanisms, multifingered hand, novel mechanisms and novel robot structures, rehabilitation and medical robotics, industrial automation and robotisation.  For further information , please contact Jian Dai (jian.dai@kcl.ac.uk).