George Adams - Faculty Profile

Dr. George G. Adams is College of Engineering Distinguished Professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at Northeastern University where he has served on the faculty since 1979. His areas of expertise are in contact mechanics and tribology; MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), especially RF MEMS switches and micromirrors; nano-mechanics (including materials characterization, adhesion, and mechanical and electrical contacts); dynamic response of structures to moving loads (including friction-induced vibrations and other instabilities); and the mechanics and tribology of information storage and processing systems (ISPS). He has published over 60 refereed journal papers and has had numerous research grants and contracts with government and industry. George received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cooper Union in 1969, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Applied Mechanics) from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972 and 1975 respectively. Dr. Adams then became an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, and a Research Associate at the IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose, California, prior to joining Northeastern University. He is an Associate Editor of Microsystems Technologies - Micro- and Nanosystems and Information Storage and Processing Systems and of the newly formed International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering. George co-founded and served as the first chair of the Contact Mechanics Technical Committee of the Tribology Division of ASME, and is a Fellow of the ASME.