Medals Recognize Horacio Espinosa’s Impact

Horacio Espinosa, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical Engineering, won the 2026 Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention administered by the Engineering Mechanics Institute. He also received the Horace Mann Medal from Brown University, the graduate school’s highest honor for alumni who have made significant contributions in their field. 

Espinosa’s research focuses on understanding the mechanical behavior of natural and synthetic nanomaterials across scales and developing micro/nanodevices for materials research and personalized medicine.

Espinosa is also a professor of biomedical engineering and civil and environmental engineering (by courtesy), the director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program, and the director of the Institute for Cellular Engineering Technologies.

2026 Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention

Awarded under the auspices of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Bažant Medal was given to Espinosa for his outstanding experimental, computational, and leadership contributions to the mechanics of failure and damage—spanning scales from nano to structural, and advancing material design, fracture theory, and structural resilience.

The award considers a candidate’s outstanding performance or specific and noteworthy actions, such as publications, patents, or other forms of scientific invention demonstrating a clear impact on failure and damage prevention.

The medal to honor Bažant was instituted in 2015. The McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Bažant has made several lasting contributions to solid mechanics, the most impactful being the Bažant size effect law, the crack band model, the microplane constitutive law, the gap test, and the AAEM method for aging creep effects in concrete structures. 

Horace Mann Medal

Espinosa earned master’s degrees in solid mechanics and applied mathematics and a PhD in solid mechanics from Brown. Brown professor emeritus Rod Clifton and Brown engineering dean Tejal Desai nominated Espinosa for the medal, noting that he “was then and is today known for his collaborative spirit, pursuit of knowledge, innovation, and motivation for understanding the world's unsolved questions.”

In addition, Espinosa currently ranks 77th in the world for citations in mechanical and aerospace engineering. With over 600 technical papers to his name, he was honored for his work to set a foundation for modern materials science. 

“Espinosa is a true leader in his field,” Clifton said. “His work in design of micro- and nano-systems, in situ microscopy characterization of nanomaterials, and microfluidics for single cell manipulation and analysis have truly advanced his field.”