(Deceased)
Honorary Member
Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering #2
Professor, Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Texas at Austin
Professor, Mathematics, The University of Texas at Austin
Professor, Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin (Deceased)
B.S. Civil Engineering 1959, Louisiana State University
M.S. Civil Engineering 1960, Oklahoma State University
Ph.D. Engineering Mechanics 1962, Oklahoma State University
Tinsley Oden was the founding director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. His research interests included multiscale modeling, error estimation and control and predictive computational sciences. Most recently, he worked on selection and validation of models of complex molecular systems, uncertainty quantification, adaptive control and on stochastic phase-field models of tumor growth.
Oden earned a B.S. in civil engineering from Louisiana State University, a M.S. in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University and a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from Oklahoma State University. He received six honorary doctorates, honoris causa, from the Technical University of Lisbon (Spain), the Faculte de Mons in Belgium, the Technical University of Cracow (Poland), Ecole Normal Superieure Cachan, Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin (in the form of the Presidential Citation).
Oden was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was Emeritus Editor-In-Chief of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering after serving as Editor in Chief for over 40 years, and served on the editorial boards of 32 scientific journals. He was a founding member of the International Association for Computational Mechanics and of the U.S. Association of Computational Mechanics. He authored or edited over 600 scientific works, including 58 books and 80 book chapters and has supervised 34 Master’s students and 45 Ph.D. students. Awards recognizing his research include the Title of Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Academiques from the French government, the USACM John von Neumann Medal, the IACM Newton-Gauss Congress Medal, and the SIAM Prize in Computational Science. The Honda Foundation awarded him their 2013 Prize Laureate for his role in establishing the field of computational mechanics.
In 1973, Oden started the Texas Institute for Computational Mechanics, a research group for faculty members and students. Under his leadership, the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences has expanded to draw faculty from 23 departments and five schools and colleges at UT. In 2017, it was ranked No. 1 worldwide in the field of interdisciplinary mathematics. In 2019, the UT System Board of Regents voted unanimously to recognize Oden’s "leadership and generous support" by renaming the Institute in his honor.
