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.

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

http://web.njit.edu/~sac3

ME 490 - MECH ENGR PROJECT A

ME 725 - INDEPENDENT STUDY I

ME 701B - MASTER'S THESIS

ME 792B - PRE-DOCTORAL RESEARCH

ME 491 - MECH ENGR PROJECT B

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

Behavior of engineering materials

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.

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 .

"Characterization of nonlinear elasticity for biological tissue using quantitative optical coherence elastography"
2017.