John C. Halpin

John C. Halpin worked for the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright Patterson AFB for more than 30 years before retiring in 1996. As Chief Engineer for the Aeronautical System Center, Dr. Halpin had responsibility for all USAF aircraft development activities. He was also a technical advisor to the FAA in formulating certification concepts for composite airframes. In recent years, Dr. Halpin has served as advisor to several USAF and DoD program offices and as a consultant to the aeronautical industry. He has published more than 80 papers in composite materials, airframe structures, structural reliability, and materials processing. He is the author of two books and editor of the 1969–70 book series Progress in Materials Science. Dr. Halpin’s pioneering 1969 book, Primer on Composite Materials, introduced laminated composite technology to the aircraft structural design and materials engineering communities. He was a co-founder of the Journal of Composite Materials

Nicholas J. Pagano

Nicholas J. Pagano, formerly Senior Scientist with the Air Force Research Laboratory, has made pioneering and seminal contributions to the field of composite materials for over 30 years. Dr. Pagano was the first to recognize the importance of interlaminar phenomena in high-performance composite materials. His discovery of the “stacking sequence phenomenon” led to new practices to reduce the potential for delamination. He formulated models to describe this phenomenon with both closed-form and numerical approaches. In a second area of contribution, he developed analytical models for bending of laminated plates that have served as the reference for all following work in the mechanics of laminated plates. His third major contribution has been in the treatment of brittle-matrix composite materials with complex microstructure such as carbon-carbon and ceramic-matrix composites.

James M. Whitney

James M. Whitney is the John F. and Leona D. Torley Chair in Composite Materials at the University of Dayton. He previously served as research scholar at the Air Force Materials Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for 30 years. An internationally recognized authority in the mechanics of fiber-reinforced composites, he has made seminal contributions to the development of laminated plate and shell theory, micromechanics experimental methods, and interlaminar analysis. Dr. Whitney has more than 125 publications, including two textbooks. He also contributed to the Delaware Composites Design Encyclopedia and participated in numerous short courses with CCM. Co-founder and first president of the American Society of Composites, he holds Fellow status in ASME, ASTM, and ASC. Dr. Whitney received the ASTM Award of Merit for his work in standardization of test methods for advanced composite materials.