School of Engineering Dean Mark Horstemeyer honored at conference in Thailand

Liberty University School of Engineering Dean Dr. Mark Horstemeyer was honored twice at the Nov. 27-Dec. 1 Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit (SIPS) International Conference in Phuket, Thailand, which focused on sustainability through science and technology.

In addition to having an event named after him, the Horstemeyer International Symposium, which addressed multiscale material mechanics and sustainable applications, Horstemeyer received the Flogen Fray International Sustainability Award.

The award was based on his advancements chronicled in “Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) for Metals: Using Multiscale Modeling to Invigorate Engineering Design with Science,” which he published in 2012, and his follow-up book in 2018 introducing concepts and case studies in academia from across the United States that show how ICME works.

“ICME is a practical way to design and make engineered products using high-fidelity modeling and simulation tools,” Horstemeyer said. “In engineering, one has different steps: design, analysis, procurement, logistics, assembly, life-cycle performance, sustainability, and death/recycling. Using ICME methodologies helps to analyze and optimize each engineering phase.”

Horstemeyer created the first graduate course on ICME as a former distinguished professor and chair for computational solid mechanics at Mississippi State University, and upon his arrival at Liberty in January 2019, he hired Dr. Heechen Cho to teach it through Liberty’s graduate engineering program.

This was Horstemeyer’s second time participating in the annual conference, put on for the first time in three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s event was held in honor of 1998 Nobel Laureate winner Ferid Murad, a Christian pharmacologist from Indiana. The conference featured plenary talks from Murad and eight other Nobel Prize winners from around the world.

“To have these Nobel Prize winners show up at your presentations and hear you talk and have questions and say complimentary things to you, it’s an honor,” Horstemeyer said.

He last attended the conference on the island of Cyprus, Egypt, in 2019, when he was invited to speak about the proof of God’s existence related to the general theory of relativity and also about the global flood recorded in Genesis 7:11, using high-performance geophysics computing simulations of the earth.

“When I was giving that presentation on the proof of God in Cyprus, there were two people in the back who were in shock,” Horstemeyer said. “They had tears in their eyes. One was the president of a university in Austria and the other was a director of research for another university in Austria. They were born-again Christians and they said, ‘We’ve never heard anybody in Europe talk like this about God in public in a scientific forum.’”

He said the conference in Thailand was also a chance for him to meet one-on-one with a Nobel Prize-winning professor and others as he introduced Creationeering concepts — using properties found in God’s creation to make innovations in the field — that have become the basis for multiple projects underway through Liberty’s School of Engineering.

On March 24, during Liberty’s Convocation, Horstemeyer and Dr. John Baumgardner, research professor emeritus at Liberty’s Center for Engineering Research and Education (CERE), will lead a School of Engineering Evolution Panel along with Dr. Andy McIntosh from England.

“(Baumgardner) is going to present a lot of the animations and simulations of the Genesis flood, and I am going to be presenting about the design and the excellence and the stability and the safety and strength of Noah’s Ark,” Horstemeyer said.

Horstemeyer will also lead an LU Send trip to Ireland over Spring Break with a focus on Creationeering.