Amber McClung, a Dayton Area Graduate Studies Institute PhD student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management, authored a paper that has been selected as a finalist in the 2008 American Society of Mechanical Engineers Pressure Vessel and Piping student paper competition. She will receive a certificate and a $1,000 prize at the ASME international conference in July, where she will present her paper, “Strain Rate Dependence and Short-Term Relaxation Behavior of a Thermoset Polymer at Elevated Temperature: Experiment and Modeling.”

The paper, described by ASME reviewers as “excellent” and “well-written,” was co-authored by McClung’s advisor, Dr. Marina Ruggles-Wrenn.