Shawn Chester

Professor, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
About Me
I started my education in 2000 in the honors college at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I received both B.S. and M.S. degrees at NJIT from the mechanical engineering department, finishing with an M.S. in 2006. My research while at NJIT was in the area of computational granular science. In 2006 I went on to the solid mechanics and materials laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I received my Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2011, specializing in solid mechanics. After MIT, I became a postdoctoral researcher in the engineering division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. My research focus in the past few years has been the development of experimentally validated continuum level constitutive theories for large-deformation multi-physics behavior of materials, and the associated numerical implementation. My work spans most aspects of mechanics; experimental characterization, theoretical modeling, numerical implementation, and experimental validation.
Education
Ph.D.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Mechanical Engineering; 2011
M.S.; New Jersey Institute of Technology; Mechanical Engineering; 2006
B.S.; New Jersey Institute of Technology; Mechanical Engineering; 2005
Website
http://web.njit.edu/~sac3
2026 Fall Courses
ME 490 - MECH ENGR PROJECT A
ME 725 - INDEPENDENT STUDY I
ME 491 - MECH ENGR PROJECT B
ME 701B - MASTER'S THESIS
ME 792B - PRE-DOCTORAL RESEARCH
ME 726 - INDEPENDENT STUDY II
ME 215 - ENGR MATERLS & PROCESSES - HONORS
ME 701C - MASTER'S THESIS
ME 700B - MASTER'S PROJECT
ME 790A - DOC DISSERTATION & RES
ME 215 - ENGR MATERLS & PROCESSES
Teaching Interests
Behavior of engineering materials
Past Courses
ME 215: ENGINEERING MATERIALS AND PROCESSES
ME 215: ENGR MATERLS & PROCESSES
ME 215: ENGR MATERLS & PROCESSES - HONORS
ME 425: FINITE ELEM METH IN ME
ME 495: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ME
ME 622: FINITE ELEM METHDS IN ME
ME 622: FINITE ELEMENT METHODS IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
ME 794: MECHANICAL COLLOQUIUM
Research Interests
My research focus in the past few years has been the development of experimentally validated continuum level constitutive theories for the large-deformation multi-physics behavior of polymeric materials and the associated numerical implementation. My work spans most aspects of mechanics; experimental characterization, theoretical modeling, numerical implementation, and validation.
Journal Article
Ashoka Karunarathne, Günel Nabiyeva, Christopher J. Rasmussen, Keven Alkhoury, Naila Assem, Jonathan Bauer, Shawn A. Chester, Alexei Khalizov, Gennady Gor. 2024. "Effects of Humidity on Mycelium-Based Leather." ACS Applied Bio Materials, vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 6441-6450.
Megan E. O'Neill, Matthew P. Adams, Matthew J. Bandelt, Siva P.V. Nadimpalli, Wenbo S. Cai, Shawn A. Chester. 2019. "Cohort Learning Supporting transdisciplinary communication and problem solving skills in graduate STEM researchers." International Journal of Teaching and Learning.
Conference Proceeding
"Characterization of nonlinear elasticity for biological tissue using quantitative optical coherence elastography"
2017.