Two Los Alamos National Laboratory staff members, Marianne Francois and Michael Pettes, have earned membership grades of distinction and were named fellows in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Nominated by their society peers and based on their significant engineering achievements, Francois and Pettes were elevated upon the recommendation of the ASME Fellows Review Committee and the Committee of Past Presidents.
Marianne Francois
Francois, the leader of the Theoretical division, was nominated for significant contributions in research and leadership. Francois is an expert in computational multiphase flow, heat transfer, materials processing and associated numerical methods. She has more than 50 peer-reviewed journal and conference proceeding publications, cited more than 3,000 times. With her expertise and leadership skills, she has made critical scientific and technical contributions to the missions of the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy, including as the lead for the National Security Applications within the DOE Exascale Computing Project. She chaired the ASME Multiphase Flow Technical Committee from 2018 to 2020 and organized symposia for more than a decade on numerical methods for multiphase flow. She currently serves on the ASME’s Fluids Engineering Division Executive Committee.
Before becoming division leader, Francois was the Laboratory’s program manager for Physics and Engineering Models for the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (2018-2020), the group leader of the Methods and Algorithms group in the X-Computational Physics division (2015-2018), and the deputy group leader of the Fluid Dynamics and Solid Mechanics group in the Theoretical division (2012-2015). She joined the Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer, Computational and Statistical Sciences Division in 2002 and became a staff scientist in 2004.
Francois earned her doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida in 2002, her master’s in aerospace engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1998 and her Diplome d’Ingenieur in engineering physics from EPF in France in 1997.
Michael Pettes
Pettes is a scientist and deputy group leader at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT). He was recognized for his contributions to strain and defect engineering as well as service and leadership in mechanical engineering. His contributions focus on engineering materials to impart new functionalities relevant to applications in energy, optical communications and mechanical performance. He has received numerous prestigious awards recognizing both his impact on and service to the engineering profession. He has published 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, served as the chair of the ASME Materials Division’s Nanomaterials for Energy Technical Committee and organized 20 symposia on nanomaterials.
Pettes joined the Laboratory as a CINT scientist with the Materials Physics and Applications division in 2018. He became a research and development manager and deputy group leader for CINT in 2021 and is currently the co-leader for the in-situ characterization and nanomechanics thrust at CINT. Before joining Los Alamos, he was an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut from 2013 to 2018, and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin beginning in 2011. Pettes served as an infantry officer in the U. S. Marine Corps’ 1st Marine Division from 2001 to 2005.
Pettes received his doctoral and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2011 and 2007, respectively. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Duke University in 2001.