MICHAEL G. CALLAS, Engr 1943, 1947 (MSE), was a leading structural engineer, as well as a longtime friend and generous contributor to the university. He received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1943 and a master’s degree in structural engineering in 1947. After completing his studies at Johns Hopkins, Mr. Callas went to work for the Whiting-Turner Construction Company and, in 1958, founded Callas Contractors, Inc., a general contracting company for construction, repairing, and remodeling of buildings and public works of all kinds.
Mr. Callas was a member of the Whiting School of Engineering’s National Advisory Council and the Civil Engineering Visiting Committee. In 1992, the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association recognized his contributions to the university with the Heritage Award. He was also a dedicated and highly respected leader in his community. In 1998, the Mason-Dixon Boy Scouts presented him with its Distinguished Citizen Award and Maryland State Governor Parris Glendening also awarded Mr. Callas the Governor’s Citation for his years of community service and unwavering commitment to the young people of Maryland. As president, regional director, 1992 Volunteer of the Year, and chairman of the Business-Education Partnership Committee, he demonstrated clear leadership skills in the Hagerstown-Washington County Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Callas began contributing toward the Michael G. Callas Professorship in Civil Engineering in 1989, and made provisions in his will to fully fund the endowment through his bequest. He passed away in 2004, leaving behind a strong legacy at Johns Hopkins.
Held by Somnath Ghosh
SOMNATH GHOSH, the Michael G. Callas Professor of Civil Engineering, received his master’s degree in theoretical and applied mechanics from Cornell University and his doctorate in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics from the University of Michigan. He currently holds joint faculty appointments in the departments of Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University and is the director of the university’s Computational Mechanics Research Laboratory.
Dr. Ghosh has made significant contributions to the field of multi-scale modeling in spatial and temporal domains applied to mechanical behavior and failure response of heterogeneous material systems with structure-material interaction. He developed the Voronoi cell finite element method, or VCFEM, which is world renowned. Dr. Ghosh is a fellow of the International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM), American Academy of Mechanics, American Association for the Advancement of Science, United States Association of Computational Mechanics (USACM), ASM International, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 1994, he received the National Science Foundation’s Young Investigator Award, and, in 2007, he was presented with the Ohio State University Distinguished Scholar Award.
The United States Association of Computational Mechanics chose Dr. Ghosh to be the organizer and general chair of the 10th U.S. National Congress of Computational Mechanics held in Columbus, Ohio, in 2009. He currently serves as that organization’s vice president, is a member of the General Council of IACM, and also chairs the American Society of Civil Engineers Engineering Mechanics Institute Computational Mechanics Committee.