Herman F. Nied was appointed professor of Mechanical Engineering at Lehigh University in 1995 and served as department chair from 2002 to 2008. His research interests are primarily in polymer processing, flexible composites, fracture mechanics, electronic packaging, MEMS, shock and vibration loading, and welding. Nied and his lab also explore the development of advanced numerical methods with an emphasis on specialized finite element codes for processing simulation and 3-D fracture analysis. The bulk of his work has been supported by Semiconductor Research Corporation, NSF, ONR, DOT, DARPA, Ford, and GE.
Prior to joining Lehigh University, Dr. Nied had been a member of the staff of General Electric’s Corporate Research and Development Center in Schenectady, NY. While at GE, he worked on numerous manufacturing problems requiring sophisticated finite element simulation. A particularly fruitful area of research involved the development of mechanical design methodologies for polymers and finite element simulation software for thermoforming processes. In 1990, he and his colleagues received the Saul Dushman Award from GE R&D for their contributions to the development of mechanical technologies for engineering polymers.
Nied is a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a member of the Polymer Processing Society, and Sigma Xi, and is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Graz, Austria, in 2021 and a Visiting Research Scientist at the Fraunhofer Institut für Werkstoffmechanik, Freiburg, Germany in 2013. He has presented a number of keynote addresses at various international conferences on polymer processing, welding and forming, and has published 113 journal papers, conference proceedings, and book chapters. Dr. Nied has graduated 25 Ph.D. and 35 M.S. students, and holds 11 U.S. and three European patents.
