RETIREMENT: Professor Edward Lovell
 fter four decades in the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, Professor Edward Lovell has retired from the mechanical engineering department.
Structural mechanics has been Lovell’s principal research focus, with applications such as nonlinear vibrations of aerospace shells, design of inertial confinement fusion reactor chambers, and nano-scale mechanics issues for the semiconductor industry. He was one of four co-principal investigators on research that successfully produced the first micron-size metal MEMS components—such as springs, gears and motors—using synchrotron radiation and electroplating, along with the late Professor Henry Guckel, the late Professor Denice Denton, and Professor Emeritus Thomas Chapman.
His more recent work with nanoscale mechanics includes collaboration at UW-Madison and with international colleagues to identify the advantages and disadvantages of so-called next-generation lithographies, including X-ray lithography, electron beam projection lithography, nanoimprint lithography and extreme ultraviolet lithography, among others.
Lovell earned his PhD in engineering mechanics from the University of Michigan in 1967. After graduation, he was awarded a National Academy of Sciences postdoctoral fellowship, held in the Structural Dynamics Division of the NASA Langley Research Center. He was also a NATO senior fellow at the University of Manchester, working on experimental shock, fracture, and wave propagation in solids. Lovell had industrial affiliations with the Boeing Company, Pratt and Whitney, and the Ford Motor Company.
He has produced more than 230 research publications and has taught more than a dozen different courses, including aerospace structural mechanics, vibrations, plates, shells, pressure vessels, mechanical instability and variational methods.
Since joining the College of Engineering, Lovell has served as the chair of the Department of Engineering Mechanics and spent the past nine years as associate chair of the ME department.
He has been affiliated with several college centers, including the Computational Mechanics Center, Fusion Technology Institute, the Wisconsin Center for Applied Microelectronics, and the Wisconsin Institute of Nuclear Systems.
Beyond department and college committee work, his service to UW-Madison has included the Campus Planning Committee, chairship of the Recreational Sports Board, and faculty advisor to the UW Racquetball Club (a sport in which he earned a Wisconsin state title).
In his retirement, Lovell plans to include more time for tournament racquetball, building a new home, and working with the family’s golden retrievers as therapy dogs.
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