Rusty Gray was honored with a six-session symposium during TMS 2015, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society’s (TMS) 144th annual meeting and exhibition, held in March at Walt Disney World in Florida.

Also in March, Gray was invited to serve as chair of the Panel on Ballistics Science and Engineering at the Army Research Laboratory. During the 2-year term, Gray will work with the National Research Council Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Gray, who has a PhD in metallurgical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1985. In the Materials Science in Radiation and Dynamics Extremes group (MST-8), he pursues fundamental and applied research primarily in the elucidation of the structure and property behavior of materials subjected to dynamic and shock-wave deformation.

“Constitutive Response and Modeling of Structural Materials,” in honor or Gray’s 60th birthday, was a forum hosted by TMS for discussing recent investigations concerning structure/property relations within structural materials—the heart of Gray’s work. Primary focus areas included constitutive response/modeling of structural materials; characterization of microstructural, textural, and damage evolution; prediction and simulation of strength and damage evolution; and model validation and experimental support.

The event’s organizers were Ellen Cerreta (MST-8), Eric Brown (Neutron Science & Technology, P-23), Neil Bourne (University of Manchester, United Kingdom), James Williams (The Ohio State University), and Kenneth Vecchio (University of California, San Diego), with sponsorship from the TMS Structural Materials Division and the Mechanical Behavior of Materials Committee.

As the 2010 TMS president, Gray broadened the society’s international reach through conferences with the Brazilian Metallurgical Society and the Canadian Metallurgical Society, helped organize an Energy Materials Blue Ribbon panel to explore how advances in materials science and engineering could contribute to an energy-efficient and low-carbon economy, and spearheaded a study on volunteerism, one of his personal passions. He has served on TMS programming, titanium, and mechanical behavior committees, and on its board of directors—as Structural Materials Division chair and director of publications; and has received the Structural Materials Division’s Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award. He is a Fellow of TMS, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the American Physical Society, and ASM International.