When
Tony Chen Memorial Lecture
Thursday, March 27, 2025 - 4:00 p.m.
AME S212
The University of Arizona Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) will host the Tony Chen Memorial Lecture on Thursday, March 27, honoring the late Chuan F. "Tony" Chen, professor emeritus and former department head.
The memorial will take place in Room AME S212, with the lecture beginning at 4:00 p.m., followed by a reception from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. outside the lecture hall.
Faculty, students, alumni, and members of the engineering community are invited to attend this special event celebrating Chen’s life and remind us of his lasting impact on the university and the field of engineering.
Can’t make it in person? Join us via Zoom.
For more information, contact the AME department.
Guest Speaker
Bruce T. Murray
Bartle Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Binghampton University (SUNY)
Bruce T. Murray is a Bartle Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University (SUNY). He received BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering from Rutgers University in 1978 and 1980, respectively, and a PhD degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1986. Before joining Binghamton University in 1997, he was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories and a research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He has held visiting positions in the Oden Institute for Computational Science and Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, in the Division of Applied Mechanics at the FDA and at VIT in Vellore, India. His research interests are in the areas of thermal management of electronic systems, modeling in mechanobiology and computational materials science.
About Tony Chen
Chuan F. “Tony” Chen, professor emeritus of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Arizona, passed away peacefully on August 17, 2019. Dr. Chen was born in Tianjin, China, and came to the United States in 1950 to study mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois. After completing his MS degree in 1954, he continued his graduate studies in aeronautical engineering at Brown University, earning his PhD in 1960. In 1980, Tony and his family moved to Arizona, where he was head of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona from 1980-89.
Chen made important and lasting contributions in a number of areas, ranging from aerodynamics to the stability of Taylor-Couette and time-dependent flows, to doubly-diffusive flows, the latter including solidification and geological fluid mechanics. Nothing delighted Tony more than finding something new and understanding it. He employed a mix of experimental and theoretical techniques, training many of his PhD students in both. His work was recognized by election to Fellow status by APS, ASME, and AAAS. Tony received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1982. He held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge, NASA-Ames Research Center, the Australian National University, and at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Dr. Chen also served as Director of the Fluid Dynamics and Hydraulics Program at NSF.
The Tony Chen Memorial Lecture Series
The Chuan F. Chen Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Arizona, established by the generous support of the Chen family (Frances, Peter, Ann, Paul, Yihua, Philip and Grace), remembers and celebrates the life of Chuan F. Chen (1932-2019).
The Series honors his legacy, bringing leading experts in the field to share advancements and insights in aerospace and mechanical engineering.